


Level 4 Step Sequence

by nisakomi



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sports, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 51,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5359688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisakomi/pseuds/nisakomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minseok and Lu Han fall in love! If only they could stop falling on their butts. (a figure skating au)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Level 4 Step Sequence

**Author's Note:**

> Artistic liberties have been taken with the events, people, and places portrayed in this story, none of which reflect reality. Written as part of the exorbitant challenge.

“Paper?” 

The flight attendant offers a flutter of eyelashes as she gestures to several flattened newspapers in her arms. The ink and newsprint rub against her suit jacket and there’s a small black smear on the collar of her light blue blouse. From his seat by the window, Lu Han can see the distinct red and yellow strips of _The National Post_ and the deep red of – 

“Thanks, a _Globe and Mail_ please,” Orser coach says, lifting a hand beside him. 

They’re leftovers, pickings that would have been given to the business class travellers had there been more passengers occupying the seats of the executive class section. It’s a small benefit of sitting at the front of the plane. Even if people are always walking by to use the washrooms, Lu Han can stretch his legs far in front of him so that his muscles don’t cramp and get any stiffer. 

The flight attendant turns to look at him, and Lu Han offers a small smile that doesn’t reach his eyes before giving a firm shake of his head. She inclines her head, and hands Brian Orser a copy of the news without commenting on who either of them are. She’s crisp and businesslike in her questioning of the other passengers in the row behind them, and soon the newspapers disappear with her as she walks down the aisle to offer other passengers a copy of the daily news.

Orser coach slips on a pair of reading glasses with the air and price tag of a man who belongs to first class travel accommodations. Today he chooses to fly economy in order to keep his protégé company. That’s not strictly true. Most of the time, Lu Han flies beside someone else, usually a member of the Chinese Skating Association, and sometimes, he and Orser coach don’t take the same flight at all. There was no one with him this competition, or at least, none who wanted to fly with him when it was all over.

With a flick of his wrist, Orser coach straightens out the folded newspaper and lays it flat across the tray table. Splayed across the cover is a picture of Canadian figure skating star Henry Lau, all smiles, and one arm reaching out in the ending pose to his free skate. Lu Han normally refrains from peeking over his coach’s shoulder to read, but the front-page photograph is too big to miss. He averts his eyes, and Orser coach struggles to flip the page in his attempt to hide the cover faster. 

Lu Han leans back into his own seat and pushes the button for it to recline. Behind him, someone kisses their teeth loudly enough that it makes Lu Han lie back further just to make a point he wouldn’t push any other day. Orser coach is probably skimming over something dry in English that would take Lu Han five times as long to read. The free daily newspapers handed out by the subways in Toronto are less frustrating. The short articles and shorter words of _The Metro_ or _24 Hours_ pass through Lu Han’s eyes quickly and without halting or hesitation if he skips over the colloquialisms. Most of the time, he still lacks the context to understand them, but the gist of the story is there.

The newspapers of choice at The Cricket Club, however, are _The National Post_ and the _Globe and Mail_ , copies spread across tables in booths occupied by club members enjoying their coffee. He occupies their space for a while each day, but they’re worlds apart. Lu Han shows up most of the time in sports jackets and skinny jeans with dark hair sticking out in places, a stark contrast to the men in crisp suits and leather shoes with hair greying but still combed back so not a lick is out of place, and heirloom watches around their wrists. On the occasion that they leave their papers behind, Lu Han plays a game where he guesses the meanings of words he doesn’t recognize and tallies how many he gets close enough. 

Today he plays a different game, one without a dictionary, and one that brings no satisfaction even if he does well. With eyes closed and the noise of the airplane engine blocking out most of the sounds around him, Lu Han guesses at what the paper looks like. The date in the top left corner of the page, underneath it is most likely an advertisement. The caption under the picture of Lau will be in bold and proclaim _’World Champion, Skating Sensation’_. Flip to the sports section and the headline would declare his triumph at the 2013 World Figure Skating Championships, with a picture of him holding onto his gold medal for emphasis. No doubt the article would compliment his step sequences and praise his skating skills. It was a series of phrases that Lu Han had heard refrained from all directions in the past two years, _’deep edges’_ the press chorused, _’smooth transitions’_. Perhaps the journalist would take a sentence or two to mention the silver and bronze medallists, before returning to applause for his huge quad toeloop. 

Last year, in France, it was Lu Han’s quad salchow that was receiving all the media attention. _’Keep your eyes on this rising star…double footed the quad salchow but fully rotated…expect him on the podium next year with better than bronze…’_ There would be no mention of Lu Han’s name in the newspapers this year. 

The pane of glass is cold against Lu Han’s forehead as he leans against the window, staring out on the wing, the only thing amongst vibrant blue skies, way above the clouds. Not out of the Earth’s atmosphere, but still above the rest of the world, looking down at the people and places below. The loneliness of being at the top is simultaneously getting the best view of the stars and having no one to stargaze with. It’s also being higher, too far away from everyone else, but no better, and certainly no happier. 

Lu Han sighs and the warm moist air from his breath fogs up the window. He glares at it as if it were the window’s fault that he could no longer see the sky beyond, before turning away to face the aisle of the plane. Orser coach is still taking in the contents of the newspaper with no sound escaping his pursed lips. Automatically, Lu Han schools his face into a neutral expression. He doesn’t want to worry his coach, even though, it’s written in his coach’s job description to worry. 

When Lu Han had first met his coach under the careful supervision of the CSA, the translator did most of the work. But living alone in Toronto meant that no translator was going to express his thoughts or aspirations for him. For the first weeks that he skated under Orser’s tutelage, he would nod his head whenever he was told anything, but never change anything on the ice. It wasn’t until his coach had noticed nothing had changed that he had asked, “Do you understand?” and Lu Han had shook his head no that they realized how big of a problem communicating was going to be. 

Lu Han is articulate in Mandarin, and is careful to say precisely what he wants to say. His strengths, weaknesses, what works for him and what doesn’t - he can envision inside his head, and if asked in an interview in China, he can pinpoint everything with the exact words he needs. Likewise, Orser coach has a lot of opinions, analogies, metaphors, and a poetic – almost romantic – way of explaining things. His other pupils come away from chats with bright expressions on their faces, looking like they had just experienced enlightenment. But when he and Lu Han tried to convey their messages to each other, they both experience more frustration than any other emotion. Any genuine thoughts, or words of comfort more honest than the usual superficial necessities were left unspoken. 

Nowadays, Lu Han tries to make it less of a struggle. If he acts like those important words aren’t needed, then they won’t have to go through the awkward challenge of trying to put into words what they think or feel with a limited vocabulary. Without words, his coach still kind of gets it, because he’s been there before. This is a knowledge that doesn’t need to be shared with words, because the shared experience speaks volumes more. The silence becomes a blanket of comfort, and the understanding they’ve developed even more so.

On their descent, Lu Han makes a face of discontent and makes swallowing actions with his throat. 

“Ears not popping?” Orser coach asks, studying Lu Han with tired eyes. 

Lu Han nods his head and gives him a sheepish look. 

He’s handed a piece of gum and thanks his coach before taking a few hard chews he can feel in his jaw. The pressure in his ears equalizes and the fuzziness disappears, his head clear and pain free. No matter how many plane rides he takes, the trips always leave him feeling disoriented for one reason or another. At least London, Ontario to Toronto leaves no room for jet lag. 

“Let’s go,” Orser says. He hands Lu Han his bag from the overhead bin, and beckons him to follow with his head. When Lu Han’s bag passes into his hands, his fingers brush against the copy of the paper still clutched in his coach’s hand. The page is flipped to the sports section, and the image and headline are about the Toronto Maple Leafs. Lu Han digs his fingernails into his palms at the sight. For some reason, it’s even worse than having Henry Lau and a gold medal grace the cover. Hockey came first, not unexpectedly, but if that sport beat out Henry then Lu Han had no chance. In the altogether unimportant world of figure skating, Lu Han wasn’t even a podium finish. Put into context like that, Lu Han was a tiny speck in the grand scheme of things. As if he weren’t feeling small enough to begin with. 

 

 

The wait time for their baggage in Toronto’s Pearson International Airport is subject to frequent complaints annually. Lu Han clutches the strap of his backpack and readjusts it onto his shoulder. It’s a little past noon when he checks his watch. He calculates that the wait so far has been fifteen minutes, and the conveyor belt hasn’t yet started moving. The flight had been less than an hour, but adding in the time spent at the airport, he probably won’t save a lot of time in comparison to the two and a half hour train ride. Flying was also much more expensive, but a cost sponsors and the skating federation were footing. 

Lu Han glances down at his watch again, noting the five-minute interval. At any rate, it would be faster to get to the apartment from the airport than the train station, so he could slip into bed sheets and sleep until tomorrow morning for training, when no doubt all the other skaters would be literally walking on ice around him, uncertain of how to treat his return. If it were last year, they would have pushed him onto a bench at break and crowded around him with questions and star-struck eyes. If it were last year he’d have a medal and something to look forward to. This year was different. 

They luggage carousel rotates at a slow chug as bags are spat out of the chute one by one. His coach leans against the back of an advertisement display board while flipping through a book, and Lu Han listens to pop music from two years back on his music player, chewing on the inside of his cheek with a scowl and eyebrows furrowed. Usually, he’s patient and doesn’t mind the line-ups or wait times. The small things that he’s always been unbothered by have built up until his temper threatens to boil over, but there’s no one to take it out on except himself.

The dissatisfied look remains on his face as they head toward the exit, suitcases rolling behind them. Lu Han walks without looking where he’s going, eyes blank and empty, and body relying on muscle memory after so many trips in and out of Toronto. The automatic doors leading out to the city slide open to reveal a long ramp, protected from a haggle of waiting family, friends, and chauffeurs by a single pane of glass. They turn left down the slope, a long rumble to the bottom, where the crowd thins out and they can carry on past the people to the cars outside in the cold wintry air. 

From inside the airport, Lu Han spots the auspicious lack of line-up at the taxi stand and quickens his stride. 

“Han, wait a second,” Orser calls after him. Lu Han stops and blinks twice before turning back to see why his coach stopped. But Brian Orser is turned away from him and Lu Han lifts his gaze to where he’s looking. He scans the crowd before finding a fan hurrying towards them in a half jog-half shuffle. The girl has shoulder length hair, dyed brown, and her voice cuts across the din of the crowd.

“Excuse me!” she calls, grasping a blue gift bag in her hands and Lu Han flinches when she scurries past his coach and holds it out toward him. It’s uncommon that he meets fans in Canada, much less be on the receiving end of gifts. Usually, it’s _the_ Brian Orser, Olympic silver medallist of Canadian figure skating sensation, who gets recognized and stopped for autographs. Chinese fans might welcome him with flowers back home, but in Canada, where the playing field of figure skaters is already so deep, there’s rarely in room for Lu Han to have popularity. 

Lu Han flushes, stumbles over himself, and shakes his head a tiny bit. He receives the gift with two hands, smiling tightly before bowing his head, shoulders tight and expression uncertain. 

“Thank you so much,” he says in accented English. Even if it’s unusual for him to receive presents in Toronto, it’s not an unwelcome experience. But even as he says the words, the images of the past weekend flash through his mind, the falls on both quadruple jumps in the free skate, the popped triple axel in the short program, the level one on the penultimate spin sequence. He can taste the bitterness on his tongue. He’s shaking, only a slight tremble, falling apart with just a tiny crack. This, this is why he’s so irritable and frustrated, it was _failure_ and surely this girl, tinier than even his relatively short coach, surely she had gotten it all wrong. Surely the present would be snatched back away from him, apologies made and there, see, her hands were reaching out towards him again. 

Lu Han is ready to hand the gift bag back when he sees the camera in her hands. 

“Can I take a picture with you?” she asks in Mandarin, with an accent that could only come from a Beijing native. 

The bitterness on Lu Han’s tongue dissolves into the taste of street eats and sweetmeats from Beijing, mellowing into something sweet and salty. The sounds of the noisy airport becomes the honking and busy traffic of China’s largest city, and the wave of nostalgia that hits Lu Han renders him speechless for a moment.

“Ah, yes, of course!” Lu Han manages, before motioning to Orser.

“Can you take a photo for us?” he asks, and for whatever reason, his coach breaks out into a grin. The fan demonstrates how the camera works, device almost slipping from her fingers twice in her excitement, and Lu Han combs his hair out with his fingers and smoothens his bangs out across his forehead. 

The two of them stand with the sign pointing toward the departures side of the terminal behind them. Her smile is bright, and Lu Han throws up a victory sign with his fingers before tilting his chin down. Orser snaps the shot and gives them a thumbs-up.

“Cute. It’s a good picture,” he says, before handing the camera back. The girl hums in happy agreement as she checks the resulting image. With a grin, she tucks it into the purse from which she retrieved it without Lu Han noticing during his brief crisis. No longer shaking, and with a warm smile now plastered across his face, the trip back to the city suddenly isn’t so bad after all.

She notices his smile, and starts in on the rapid fire Mandarin again, heavy ‘R’s and crisp, clean sounds, “Thank you for giving your best in everything!”

Lu Han opens his mouth. He closes it. She laughs nervously and covers her face with her hands. Lu Han opens his mouth again. “Thank you for your support,” he says in slow, deliberate Chinese, taking care to shape his mouth around each word and revelling in being able to speak in his mother tongue despite being so far away from home. It sounds like music in his ears, but feels heavy and awkward in his mouth from lack of use. No, Toronto was his home now anyway, or at least his headquarters. 

The girl beams, waves, and bows her head to Orser. She leaves in a hurry, and sets off into a skip when she gets a fair distance away. 

“What did she have to say?” Orser asks, as they resume their journey to the taxi rank. 

“She wanted…” Lu Han breaks off, looking upwards and trying out words without actually saying them. He meets his coach’s eyes and they stare back at him, unwavering. He doesn’t finish what he was going to say. 

“Orser coach, I want,” he pauses, searching for the right word again, “More. More?” He shakes his head, that’s not quite right. “Better. I want better.”

“I know,” his coach says, voice not soft, but lost against the backdrop of the airport sounds. “You’ll get better.” In interviews, he throws words around like “confidence”, “maturity”, and “experience”, but Lu Han is impatient to get better immediately. He’s been ready to be better for months. “Like watching grass grow,” Orser had once explained. 

All Lu Han has done since arriving in Canada two years ago has been watching grass grow.

 

 

Despite the spring equinox around the corner, Toronto is covered in a thick layer of snow, and the temperature is minus thirty something with the wind-chill. After the overheated airport, Lu Han’s hands withdraw far back into the warmth of the sleeves of his coat, but not before tugging down his hat to completely cover his ears. California. If he ever switched training locations again, it would not be in the North like Beijing, Seoul, or Toronto. Surely Los Angeles had some decent skating rinks. Not Canada. And definitely not Russia. Some place where there were seasons other than just winter. 

But skating is a winter sport after all. 

He lifts his suitcase over the crossing instead of rolling it to avoid the unappealing gray sludge covering the roads from residue left behind by cars. The cab driver reaches for it but he shoves it into the trunk of the car without help, and slips into the backseat. 

“I’ll cover the fare,” his coach tells him. Lu Han starts to protest, but he’s cut off when his coach shuts his door for him and slips into the passenger seat. 

Technically, the skating association should foot the bill but his coach isn’t a fan of the hassle and wasn’t one to pretend he didn’t have a surplus of money with not much to spend it on other than his club skaters. 

“Thanks,” Lu Han says, and buckles his seatbelt. The cabbie nods at him, looking at him through the rear-view mirror, but he means it for his coach.

When Orser is buckled in, he settles back into his seat and crosses his arms over his chest. 

“Right, we’re headed to North York,” he says. The driver slides the car onto the highway without a word and Orser rattles off the address to the apartment Lu Han stays at and then the address to his own house. 

The cab driver tries to make small talk. Orser replies with short answers out of politeness and Lu Han says nothing at all. They make it onto the highway and then the driver stops trying. Lu Han leans his head against the window, and lowers his shoulders. The cars speeding into the city all around them make a low volume whistling sound as they pass by. He counts them to pass the time, staring out across vast expanses of gray concrete punctuated by vehicles sprayed with dirty snow. 

At the sight of the apartment complex, a soft sigh escapes his lips and his eyelids become heavy. He takes his luggage from the cab driver and Orser rolls down his window and tells him to get some rest. Lu Han waves and thanks him.

“Hurry up and go inside, it’s freezing,” Orser says, eyes wrinkling. He’s smiling again and Lu Han suddenly remembers he never asked why he had grinned at Lu Han’s fan, or told him what the fan said. All the fondness he’s received today has been unnerving, but he smiles too and the wrinkles around his eyes mirror those of his coach’s. 

Someone else is returning home at the same time, and they wait for the elevator with amiable chitchat. 

“Good trip?”

Lu Han doesn’t trust his English and nods and smiles in response. Trust Canadians to always be friendly. Even though the stranger is kind, he’s relieved when he gets the elevator to himself, no longer obligated to stand up appropriately. He slacks against the handrail and his posture goes completely. It takes him a few moments after the automated voice announces their arrival at his floor, staring blankly at the hallway in front of him before finally dragging his feet down the hall and slumping against his front door. 

His head knocks against the solid wood and he doesn’t register the pain. Somehow, he manages to fumble around in his bag and retrieve his keys to let himself in. He barely remembers to lock the door behind him, and drops his suitcase, backpack, and keys on the floor in the foyer, without caring how or where they end up. He kicks off the shoes on his feet without untying the laces and as soon as he unzips his coat, he throws it over the arm of the sofa. If he had any more energy he might have ran to his room, but all he manages is a rushed shuffle and throws himself onto bed without bothering to change out of his clothes or even getting under the blankets. 

It’s well after nine o’clock when he comes to again, from a deep and dreamless slumber. Already night time and no decent time for a meal, but nothing had ever come between him and his food, and he isn’t about to let something as trivial as the time of day stop him. 

He rolls over and trips over his feet on the way to the bathroom. With white knuckles and shaking arms, he props himself against the plastic counter and stares at his reflection. The mirror shows mussed hair, red lines where the fabric of the pillow cover creases had dug into his face while he was sleeping, and a sweat stain blooming on the chest of his t-shirt due to the universal temperature control in the apartments. Stripping himself of his clothes, Lu Han eyes the laundry basket back in his room. It’s at least three quarters full, and there are some more dirty clothes in his suitcase. If he can find at least one outfit he can re-wear, it probably wouldn’t need two trips for laundry. 

The shower he takes is piping hot, and eases some of the aches in his legs. Maybe one of his coaches would take pity on him tomorrow and go easy on the weight training. But even as he uncaps his shampoo bottle, he knows that’s wishful thinking. Best put off some of the household chores and cleaning until the next weekend then, or he wouldn’t be able to move at all the day after. He lathers his hair, rinses soap off his body, and he still doesn’t feel at home. 

The feeling of homing hadn’t come when they touched down at the airport, nor when he walked into the crisp Toronto air, not when he got into his apartment, or his own room. If the act of coming home was ever consummated this journey, Lu Han hadn’t felt it. He slept, he woke up, and yet, ever since London, Ontario, everything felt like a dream. Still feels like a dream. 

He towels off and pulls on a pair of hideous pyjamas, unabashed without the presence of others. In the kitchen, he sets about making himself an unhealthily large portion of fried rice with scrambled eggs, pieces of sausage, and soy sauce. For other families, the amount was capable of feeding three people, but alone in Toronto, there’s no one to admonish him to eat less, and so he also doesn’t bother with a bowl or a plate. Perched on a stool in front of the stove, he helps himself to big heaping spoonfuls straight from the wok. 

He whispers into his empty apartment, “I’m home.” 

No one answers.

 

 

The security personnel at the front desk greet him when he arrives for practice, letting him in with a swipe of a key card and the press of a button. Lu Han expects someone else to say hello and keeps a light smile lest anyone think he’s unhappy. Today however, Lu Han arrives when the juniors are all on the ice, and none of the other seniors are to be seen. The booths and tables are empty, and the only person he sees when he enters the changing rooms is Kris. 

“Hey,” Kris says, with his deep low voice and distinctly Canadian sounding English. He’s lacing up his sneakers, and only glances at Lu Han for a moment when he walks in. 

“How are you?” Lu Han asks in Chinese. He sits down at an empty space on the benches across from Kris. It’s weird talking to Kris in English. Kris skates for Canada, and has lived in Canada ever since his parents emigrated with him from Guangzhou. His retention of both Mandarin and Cantonese and subsequent relative mastery of English impresses Lu Han to no end. Kris plays it down, but that only makes him more envious. 

“Eh, alright I guess,” Kris says. He gives a final tug on his shoelaces and stands up. At full height, Kris is extremely imposing. Even without the added height of boots and blades, he towers over Lu Han. He has the long limbs to make for beautiful lines and artistry, but Lu Han guesses that the height can be a disadvantage in technical elements such as jumps and certainly spins. 

“How about –” Kris stops himself before finishing his questing. “The others are in the studio, we’ve got dance practice first,” he says in a rush. And then he looks embarrassed. He does something with his massive hands, probably unsure of where to put them, as usual. There’s a weird expression on his face, mouth open weirdly with one thick eyebrow raised. 

“Look, uh, if you, like, I don’t know, want to talk, or something, let me know, yeah?”

Lu Han wants to be thankful but all he can do is try not to laugh at this bizarre display of acquaintanceship forced into friendship. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Lu Han says, eyes not leaving the bag he’s rummaging. 

“I wasn’t worried,” Kris replies without thinking, “I mean, well.” 

This isn’t a conversation Lu Han wants to be having, especially not with Kris Wu, not in their change rooms before he had even a chance to be on the ice since that disastrous free, and everything feels wrong. It shouldn’t have happened, any of it. He shouldn’t be in a position where people perceived he needed comforting, he shouldn’t be talking to Kris like this, and he shouldn’t be in Canada of all places. Lu Han was living someone else’s life, and didn’t belong in his own skin. 

Kris looks relieved that Lu Han dismissed the thought, which makes Lu Han wonder why he had felt obligated to extend an olive branch in the first place. Kris clears his throat. 

“Anyway, just to let you know, coach has us in the weight room today, and I don’t think we get any more ice time.” With that, Kris nods his head and leaves, the sound of his footsteps and track pants fading along with him. 

Lu Han slumps forward and heaves a loud sigh that echoes in the empty locker room before getting changed. 

He’s the last one in the dance studio, and he tries to slip in without being noticed, which is futile with the huge floor-to-ceiling mirrors across the length of the entire front wall, and the tiny class size. Some people wave at him, others give him tight smiles, but mostly they look up to see him come in, and then quickly look away. Lu Han stares and does not flinch when their instructor raises an eyebrow. He receives a quick nod for his lack of display and drama, and they get ready to begin. 

That’s where Lu Han’s eyes stay for the entire class, resolutely avoiding eye contact with anyone else through the mirror, and throwing himself into the routine they’re learning. He has to work with double the amount of effort to master the choreography after having missed parts from the days he was away at Worlds. Having to keep his concentration keeps his eyes from wandering.

When the forty-five minutes are up, he’s drenched in sweat, and can feel droplets rolling off his nose. He’s never really applied himself so diligently to any of the off-ice sessions before, but it feels good knowing that he can and that he did. Like reminding himself that he can accomplish things if he actually works for it. He tilts his head and smiles to himself a little in the mirror, if only because that means he isn’t utterly useless. 

Three skaters in a corner chatter quietly just among themselves, and the rest of the locker room is subdued. The lack of conversation makes Lu Han restless, and he is the first one to bolt at the end of practice, carrying his black duffle bag and desperate to leave.

His path from the change rooms to the exit leads him past the rink, and Lu Han stares out at the ice and the skaters on it without any expression on his face. The rink has a distinct musky smell that seems to permeate all rinks, and is laced with the odour of sweat. He inhales deeply, sharply through his nose and lets that scent linger in his nostrils. It smells like home.

Squatting down, he reaches a hand out and just barely brushes against the ice with his fingertips, touching it, feeling it, eyes trailing after the junior skaters running stroking drills. His thoughts are unfocused, and without thinking he leans forward, one foot ready to step on to the ice. A sudden pang runs through him, and he doesn’t get a chance to blink before his face scrunches into a dissatisfied expression. The ice is too painful now, the loss too fresh and raw, like a physical wound, deep enough that the scab is taking a long time to form over. 

When he straightens his head, the small lump that’s reflected in the wall length mirrors is nothing like what he wants to see, doesn’t show who he wants to be. He rises, and his vision blackens momentarily at the suddenness. 

From the corner where he stands, overseeing a junior girl struggling with her double axel, Orser spares Lu Han a single glance. What he sees makes him look back again. 

“Try that set up again, Gina, the position is looking better than before but we’ve got to get that shoulder around. Give me a moment, I’ll be right back.” 

Lu Han is almost at the automatic double doors when his coach catches up to him. 

“Hey, Han, just a minute.”

Lu Han pauses abruptly with one sneaker on marble floor, the other on carpet, body halfway through the opening to reception. He turns around and musters as much of a sense of ease as he can.

“Well, let’s not stand here, come back for a moment.”

Lu Han nods and follows his coach to a booth. They both slide in, and Lu Han leans against the padded backs of the seats, hands folded on the table between them. 

“I was wondering,” Orser looks from Lu Han’s eyes down to the table and scratches his hand through his hair, “If you might want a quick break.” 

Lu Han hasn’t even processed what he’s heard when he continues, “I mean, I know the season isn’t technically over yet, but you didn’t want to participate in the team trophy right?”

“I won’t go to teams, I don’t think,” Lu Han says after a beat.

“I don’t necessarily think you have to go on a vacation, but maybe a trip back home, to China, or Korea? Wherever, just to, you know, find your feet again, some stability. Off the ice, I mean. Two feet on solid ground. I think it would do you a world of good for when we really start up again, fresh legs for the new season, new program, summer training. Maybe go on a camping trip with your friends, to ground you. It could be a good experience.”

His coach is quick to use ‘could’ and ‘can’. He sees possibilities. It’s never a ‘should’ or a ‘must’, not even a ‘would’. Could be a good experience might also mean that it could be a terrible experience. Lu Han looks at him and tilts his head, but doesn’t say anything.

“Technically, everything, all this,” and Orser waves a hand around absently, he doesn’t need to specify what _this_ is, “has been a great opportunity, a strong learning experience. This is the kind of thing that can be a springboard for maturity in skaters.”

“Oh,” Lu Han voices articulately. 

“Actually, I just wanted you to give it some thought. Consider it. You don’t have to decide on anything right now. I just wanted to give you that option. In case you want or need it, it’s a long season.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? Okay as in you’ll give it some thought?” 

“Yeah,” Lu Han says and nods. He hesitates but then ploughs on, “what you think I should do? I should take break?”

Orser’s eyes look at Lu Han’s face, simultaneously gaunt and puffy, eye circles dark and eyelids drooping, the slouch in his shoulders and the finger twitching on the table. He reaches across the table and gives Lu Han’s hand a gentle pat. He swallows his own emotions. 

“You have to make that choice for yourself, Lu Han, it’s a part of growing up, making your own decisions.” 

“Oh,” Lu Han says again. 

They both look out through the pane of glass separating them and the ice, and Lu Han squints. The ice is decidedly unhelpful and does not reveal a pattern indicating yes or no, good or bad. 

Orser’s eyes, however, are focused on Gina, arms tightly drawn across her body, two feet down as she lands the axel – was that a slight under rotation? – but can’t hold on and stumbles backward into a heap. 

“I better get back,” Orser excuses himself. “See you tomorrow.”

Lu Han’s “thank you,” and “see you,” both die on his lips. 

He wants to think about his coach’s words on his return trip to the apartment, but gets distracted by an advertisement on the bus and misses his stop. It’s been one of those weeks.

 

The ice is more foreboding the next day. Lu Han arrives earliest, getting changed alone, and waiting with his skate guards in place while the novice skaters finish on the ice. He runs a thumb over the top of his boots, getting slightly scuffed again. The Zamboni circles around and he sits on a bench, knees trembling, legs bouncing up and down, and arms shaking involuntarily while the younger skaters are given advice and feedback about the work of the day off to the side. The Zamboni's final lap makes him shudder, and he swallows, upon its disappearance mouth suddenly very dry. He is the first one out, but he takes off his skate guards slowly enough that some of the others get on the ice before he does. 

"Just one foot in front of the other, like you learned when you were first just starting out," Orser says behind him. He's fiddling with his gloves and not looking at Lu Han, but Lu Han gets the message and takes a few wobbly steps onto the ice. 

It's only been a few days, but it feels strange beneath the feet. Simultaneously wet and brittle, and completely unnatural. "It'll get better after you're warmed up," he whispers to himself in Chinese, because there's no one around to hear him, and it's lonely not being able to speak. 

“Push, glide, push, glide, right, left, and again,” he mutters. 

He laps the rink slowly once before starting on forward sculling, arms swinging back and forth to give him more power, legs pushing. The blades of his skates trace bubbles along the ice, weaving in and out up and down the rink. Right, it feels a little bit better. A tiny bit more comfortable. 

After a while he switches back to doing crossovers, and then continues on through his regular warm up. The routine is foreign to him, his skates don't move readily. His muscles freeze up, unable to follow the basic commands from his brain, and he has to think through his entire routine, asking his arms and legs to listen and pay attention as he carefully reflects upon each element, more robotically than usual. If anyone skates close to him, he flinches uncharacteristically, surprising those who had come to see him as usually unaware of his surroundings. 

He can't shake off that weird feeling. 

His jumps lack their regular height. In fact, Lu Han is unable to really get vertical at all. He’s barely off the ground before he's coming back down again, without having made more than a single rotation. His legs are like lead, uncooperative and heavy, his arms weak and incapable of remaining steady. By the time the warm up is over, he's exerted a lot more energy than he should have to, and pants, trying to catch his breath before joining the others in their daily exercises.

Tracy leads them through stroking drills, working on balance and strength on both legs and then each leg individually. It’s pragmatic and systematic, the way they work up through all the muscle groups from toes and ankles up to the neck and head. His calves and quadriceps burn from the effort and he takes two glides to cover the space that required only one. The extra steps are costing him in the amount of energy he has, a limited quantity already that’s meant to last him for the rest of the day.

Practice is exhausting, and shows him the value of good technique. 

It also makes him lose the last drop of faith he has in himself.

He throws himself into elements, but the jumps don’t come no matter how high he gets or how far he pulls in. His body is unable to regain the positions it’s used to, and no matter what he feels off kilter, anxious, and incompetent. He tries quads, and when they don’t work, he tries triples, and in his frustration, he can’t land a single thing. Fall after fall after fall, he becomes used to lying on the ice, body battered and bruise, and the cold seeping into his body as his chest rises and falls heavily. 

Even the double toeloop he throws in as a desperate resort to convince himself that he hasn’t lost it all has a wobbly landing, and it takes him several tries before he feels secure again with the triple toeloop. 

From a metre up in the air to the ice isn’t a great distance, and certainly not a far fall, but the speed and the impact are hard on his body, and the soreness does not fade away with time. The only thing that grows is his frustration, and he huffs and puffs away as he circles the ice with his hands on his hips, blowing a strand of hair from his face and blinking away the tears welling up in his eyes.

When he goes for his water break, he can only shake his head at himself sadly, having made negative progress in the time he’s been granted. The disappointment is written in the slope of his shoulders, the bend of his head, eyes trained downward as he reached for his water bottle. 

He misses and his hand knocks against it. It tips over slightly, and Lu Han looks up with alarm. 

He watches it fall with his mouth open, reflexes too slow to do anything, and sees it tumble in somersaults off of its perch and down. It lands with a clang, a fall truly worthy of his performance on the ice earlier in the day. The sound is loud and piercing in his ears, whether due to proximity or otherwise and it rings with a sharp tone, echoing and quivering. The sound hangs suspended in the air like Lu Han can no longer seem to do, in a way defying the gravity that caused the fall in the first place.

Before Lu Han opens his mouth to swear, a hand reaches down and picks up the metal bottle to hand back to him. 

“No more for today,” Orser says, voice unyielding.

“Practice?” Lu Han asks, looking up, eyes and mouth in a tight expression of confusion.

“At this rate, you’re going to teach yourself bad habits. Go home. Watch some videos. Remember what skating looks like. Try to remember out what it feels like. Scratch that. Don’t do anything. Go home and sleep.” 

Lu Han’s eyes are heavy not from a lack of trying, but an inability to fall asleep even in bed. The tossing and turning lasted all night, and when his alarm finally went off in the morning, he was still awake. 

His legs want to jump. His brain doesn’t. 

As he leaves, dragging his feet and keeping his head down, he overhears a snippet of conversation.

“A break is punishment. After you watch someone for as long as I have, you realize that to some people, they just need to be on the ice. When they’re off the ice they don’t do anything but fantasize about being back on the ice. To some people time off is a reward, maybe, but not him.” 

 

 

Around two in the afternoon, he arrives home, opening his door at least an hour earlier than expected. He lifts his duffel bag off his shoulder and over his head, discards it on the floor, the contents dumped into piles. The thought of food makes him feel nauseous, so he takes his coach’s advice and slides into bed. His blinds are drawn but the light filters through to the room. 

The afternoon quiet unnerves him. 

He can’t keep still under the duvet, rolling onto one side and then switching to the other, adjusting his pillow as he goes. The restlessness doesn’t disappear after a quarter of an hour and when half past the hour comes and goes, he shoves off the covers, slides his feet into fluffy slippers, and noisily approaches the dining room.

For a brief moment, he stares at the computer, eyes narrowed and uncertain. The contemplation doesn’t last long, and he can’t turn it on because he knows he wouldn’t be able to resist searching for news articles, wondering if anyone had said positive things, or if he had been mentioned at all.

Instead, he grabs his cellphone off the counter and places it on the dining table. He sits with both feet on the chair, scrunched up into a ball, and stares at the blackened screen. With his chin resting against the arms crossed over his knees, Lu Han sighs.

It’s way too early in the morning to be awake in Seoul, Lu Han does the math on his fingers because time zones are annoying and he really ought to know the time difference by now, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t need to. The odds always are…

He picks up the phone, and taps the screen quickly. 

“Hello?” the voice that greets him is sharp and clear; the sound quality does little to betray the distance between the callers on either end of the line.

“Minseok!” Lu Han exclaims, and leaps up from his seat, banging his knee against the table in the process. He doesn’t even wince, and presses the phone against his ear. 

“Lu Han you do remember we’re not in the same country anymore right?”

“You’re awake!” He grins, face brightening like an early morning sunrise, examining the layer of dust on his windowsill before pacing around his small dining room table. Korean sits heavy and comfortable on his tongue, tasting sweet and sounding like music. 

“Yes, that’s what happens when your phone rings at four thirty in the morning, you wake up,” he says. He sounds weary, but not groggy. 

“Don’t be silly, people who get woken up by the phone ringing at four thirty in the morning usually sound like they’ve just caught a nasty head cold. But _someone_ sounds very much as if they’ve been awake studying for a medical degree all night because they’re too busy with skating in the day –” he singsongs.

“You better be dying of something right now for you to be calling at this time,” Minseok says, interrupting him, but Lu Han continues on and ignores the interjection. His footsteps around the dining room quicken.

“– so maybe they shouldn’t be trying to pursue both graduate school and competitive sports at the same time, heaven knows there’s not enough time in the world for that, –”

“Lu Han!” 

“– like I’ve been telling them for ages. Of course, _someone_ refuses to listen to me, even though they definitely know that I’m right, and that it’s impossible to do two –”

“Lu Han!”

“– things that require as much commitment as full time jobs and do them well. And maybe they should just put off the things he can do when he’s no longer young and healthy for a while and join me in the senior circuits because he’ll certainly be more successful than me, especially if he stops living off coffee, given that I wouldn’t know hard work even if it hit me in the face.”

“Lu Han.” Minseok says, and this time, Lu Han immediately stops his pacing. Minseok’s voice sounds strained, soft, and _worried_ , which hadn’t been his intention at all. 

“You’re back?” He asks. Lu Han nods his head even though Minseok can’t see him. Yes, he’s back in Toronto, but he’s not back where he wants to be. He doesn’t say a word of this. Minseok clears his throat to speak once, twice, but remains silent. 

Lu Han fiddles with the hem of his shirt between his index finger and his thumb. “I want to come back.”

“To Seoul?” 

“It’s been a long time since I’ve visited home.”

“Are we talking about Seoul? Or Beijing?” 

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Minseok is frowning, Lu Han can tell. He can hear it in the silence, and staring at the blank wall ahead gives him a canvas to imagine what he looks like.

“Yixing says you don’t keep in touch.” 

“Does he? I’m busy, I guess,” he says and shrugs. 

“Busy.” 

“He’s busy too, and I don’t want to distract him from stuff,” he says with a wave of his hand.

“And yet.” 

“What?”

“Somehow, you have no qualms calling me at a completely unreasonable hour, and you’re busy but not busy enough that you can’t end up calling me several times a month.”

“Does it bother you?”

“It’s just a little bit weird,” Minseok concedes.

“I’ve known Yixing since we were kids, it’s not the first time I’ve disappeared for extended periods of time and he’s survived. If I stopped calling you, who would nag you to eat and sleep properly?”

“I’ve survived for enough years before I met you,” he replies wryly. 

“Does it bother you?” Lu Han asks again.

“Since when were you the kind of person to be bothered by bothering other people?” Minseok teases.

“Whatever. If I call Yixing his automatic response is to try and give me advice. You just tell me I’m being stupid.” 

“I don’t tell you you’re stupid. I tell you to seriously reflect and consider your options.” 

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“So you’re coming back to Seoul?” Minseok asks.

“No, I’m being stupid. You have yet to tell me to think carefully about my choices.” 

“We’re still in the middle of the season though. Is this a permanent move? Or a leisure trip?”

Lu Han snorts. “Does it seem like I can afford to take a vacation right now?” 

“Is this because of what happened –” Minseok stops himself and lets out a breath. They listen to each other breathing for a moment.

“What happened?” Lu Han’s voice flattens. 

“I wasn’t going to say worlds.”

“Right. I’d better let you get back to studying. Maybe you can get some sleep.”

“Really, I was going to say, I mean, it’s just that SM is different from when you left.”

Lu Han blinks and lowers his shoulders. “I see. You should still sleep.” 

“You’ll see if you come for a visit. We can talk about worlds then too, if you want.”

“Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “Well, take care.” 

“Lu Han?”

“Yeah?”

“It doesn’t bother me.” 

The phone beeps, signalling the end of the call. Lu Han smiles. 

 

 

Weekdays are quiet and empty at the laundry facilities in the basement, and Lu Han can no longer ignore the pile of practice clothes piling up since he left a week ago for worlds. Without the presence of young children shrieking and running circles around tired parents, he finds he doesn’t mind staying to wait. He settles into a metal folding chair, laundry hamper perched atop the washing machine at the end, and flips through a book he had picked up at the library to improve his English. The thrum and gentle vibration of the washing machine adds light background noise. The wash and dry cycles both finish quicker than Lu Han expects them to. 

After a quick dinner, he does all the household chores he can think of, mopping floors, dusting shelves, wiping down the bathroom and kitchen, outfitting the bed with new sheets and taking out the garbage. It’s a way of procrastinating, even though putting off sleep doesn’t seem like doing himself a favour. The entire apartment is absolutely spotless by the time he’s done, and he’s exhausted enough to try and get some shut-eye. 

Even with a relaxing shower, his mind races as soon as his head hits the pillow. He has questions for everyone, including himself. When he falls into a restless sleep, he dreams of lying helplessly in a hospital bed, and a doctor telling him, “Hello Lu Han, I’m here to save your life,” in three different languages. 

The alarm set for the morning rings and rings and he doesn’t stir. While by no means a morning person or an early riser, Lu Han rarely misses his alarm, and never misses practice. On days he wakes up sick, he makes a thermos of tea and brings it to the club to sit and watch and run on the elliptical if he’s not allowed to train on the ice. 

If anyone’s ever missing from practice, it’s usually Kris, who shows up late most of the time if he bothers showing up at all. 

“Shouldn’t you be more diligent about this kind of thing?” Lu Han had asked once. 

“Shouldn’t you be working on something?” Kris had retorted. 

As far as Lu Han was aware, Kris had never been penalized or reprimanded for his behaviour, per se. 

“If you want to get better, you have to work hard. No one’s going to make you come every day, and your only punishment will be to remain, quite frankly, mediocre for the rest of your life,” Orser had said once, pulling Kris aside. 

It was the most non-disciplinary action Lu Han had ever seen. 

By the time Lu Han wakes up, it’s nearing noon, and he’s even more tired from the effects of oversleeping. When he looks over to check the time, he doesn’t bother groaning or muttering. He rolls over and gets up only to use the bathroom and find his laptop. 

For the rest of the day, he stays nestled with his entire body, head included, under the covers, watching old practice videos, old performance and competition videos, and avoiding the section of the internet that was talking about worlds. 

It’s weird watching old videos, because his younger self was so happy and so much less mature, but it’s his older self that’s throwing a silly fit over his results and he feels strange, being humbled by himself. The last time he said, “it’s fun to skate,” without worrying about who he was up against, who needed to beat, or what the judges thought of his skating skills had been an entire season ago, before the barrage of reporters who had flocked to Cricket over the summer to film media releases, press interviews, and produce entire documentaries about a young man skyrocketing to fame.

Some of those clips would never be released, at this point, with his rollercoaster fall down the ranks so quickly afterwards. 

“Couldn’t handle the pressure,” the rumours would whisper, and hostile know-it-alls would no doubt write in-depth criticisms of his skating, and wonder how such a lack of talent became so hyped up in the first place. Online forums would laugh at him, typing without a name attached to cruel comments. 

He doesn’t click the links. He tries hard not to read the comments on any public videos either. Sometimes it’s cute cheers of support with smiley emoticons, but more often than not it’s people who make judgements on his character based on the few minutes of skating they see a few times a year. When his cursor lingers over links he shouldn’t click on, he’s reminded of how lonely it is to be an athlete, especially if you’ve ever been in the limelight, for good or for bad. 

“It’s lonely at the top!” Minseok jokes, sometimes, eyes racing over texts, and pencil scrawling notes in a notebook faster than Lu Han can process the scientific jargon. 

“It’s not just the top, it’s everything about a individual, singles sport. There’s no teamwork, no alternates, just you and your blades and the ice.”

“There’s your club, isn’t there? The people you train with?” Minseok never looks up, somehow able to actively read material and maintain conversation with Lu Han, who changes topic on a whim, without any difficulty.

“I guess, but on the ice, when you’re doing your run-throughs, it’s not like there’s room to talk. Or even breathe. It’s your own world, and it’s a lovely world, but I’m the only one in it, and I can’t reach out, and I can’t let anyone in.” 

Minseok shuts his book closed and stretches, one arm hitting Lu Han in the face in the process. “Come on, let’s go get coffee. If you’re on your best behaviour, maybe we can come back to the rink early and I’ll let you tie everyone’s skates in knots and won’t tell anyone you did it.” 

So Lu Han doesn’t look at the taunts and jeers or the messages of encouragement, and definitely doesn’t watch the free skate again. 

Maybe he’ll never re-watch that particular free skate in his life. 

But the judges protocols are nothing but small numbers, and the value of a negative three can only be rationalized in his head, unlike the pop of an intended triple axel, which can be felt like a slice of a blade across his chest. 

He stares, and stares, drinking in the numbers and willing them to change on his behalf, not the placements, but just the marks. Without the falls, he’d be two points up, and without the minus three grade of execution on the quads he’d be at least six points up on top of that, the spin sequence was another two marks lost, the single axel, the doubled lutz, and then the program components scores which all suffered as a result of poor performance and execution. He knows he gave up during, he remembers the flame fizzing out, and when he adds all the marks up he knows he could have been on the podium, in fact, he should have been on the podium.

But the math doesn’t make things better, and knowing that he was close makes it worse, because now he can blame himself. If only he hung onto the landing of the toeloop, if only he hadn’t hesitated on the axel, if only he kept pushing to the end to avoid the wobbles in the steps and spins, and the list of things he could have done, should have done, is endless. 

He lets himself wallow. In bed, under the darkness of his covers, where no one else can see him, he pouts and cries and punches the mattress. He flails his legs and shouts expletives loudly and quickly. He lets himself get angry to release everything he had been bottling up. In the end, it’s not sleep that he needs but distance and perspective, and the chance to beat himself up. If he gets properly worked up, he can move on, and the dark and heavy cloud sitting on his head and shoulders and weighing him down lifts. 

Or it might have been the weight of the blankets that he takes off in order to pad into the kitchen to see if he can find any chocolate. 

He might have talked to Minseok about worlds. But he doesn’t need to, not any more. His first order of business is to figure out logistics of a plane ride home and figure out if the Chinese Skating Association is willing to foot the bill, or if he’ll have to take it out of money earned from sponsors. 

 

 

“So you’ve decided then?”

His coach’s perception doesn’t give him a start. 

“Yes, I leave tomorrow.”

“Good. I didn’t want to make the decision for you, but I think this is the right one. It would be futile to continue doing the same thing and expect different results.”

“What does futile mean?” Lu Han asks, just as someone skates past them and wipes out completely, splayed onto their stomach. 

They both look at the body on the ground. 

“It means useless. And unsuccessful,” Orser says, amusement written on his face. 

Lu Han just goes to offer a hand to help the poor kid up, but not without letting him fall back down on his butt once, first, just for kicks. 

“I’ll bring back some authentic Chinese snacks,” Lu Han informs Kris generously, “and hopefully customs doesn’t find out or take them from me before the potentially illicit goods end up in your hands.”

Kris looks perplexed. “Why would you do something like that? Can’t you just get shrimp crackers in Chinatown or something?” 

“Shrimp crackers,” Lu Han repeats, expression aghast, “that’s your idea of delicacies from your motherland?” 

“What exactly are you going to bring me back that I can’t buy at Pac Mall?” Kris asks. “They have lamb kebabs, white rabbit candies, stinky tofu, and phone cases for less than five bucks.”

“I was going to bring you a chunk of the great wall, actually. Or a hefty collection of bootleg DVDs for movies that aren’t even in theatres yet.” 

Kris gapes. “You’re not travelling through America are you? You could be _detained_.”

Lu Han assesses the state of Kris’s practice clothes. “I’m not going to be detained,” he says scathingly, and decides against telling him that his shirt is inside out. 

“How would you know? Have you tried bringing in illegal goods? Don’t tell me – are you a smuggler posing as an amateur athlete?” 

“If you don’t want knock off Gucci that’s fine, you don’t have to be so high and mighty about my chosen profession,” Lu Han says with a huff, and heads back onto the ice to try to improve the rotation of his upper body and get his torso obeying his brain again. 

“Wait, Lu Han? You don’t mean that right? Am I going to get arrested for aiding and abetting a fugitive? What if someone finds out? Are you going to get deported? I mean I obviously don’t care but…Lu Han? Lu Han?”

 

 

He has many ideas in his head of how it will go.

In one imagining, he has a picture of all of his friends meeting him at the airport, holding up a sign with his name printed in dark black ink on a piece of white cardstock. Maybe two pieces of paper, both with his name, one in Minseok’s neat Hangul, and the other in Yixing’s tidy Chinese. All of them smile at each other with their hands in the pockets of their jeans, relaxed and casual. They chat about various things like music or clothes or school, and Lu Han revels in the fact that there’s more to their lives than skating. After a while of milling about in the airport, someone will realize they’d be better off in a restaurant eating, and they will all head out for drinks because they’re tired of just standing around. No one else knows any of their names, and passersby simply believer they’re a group of friends reuniting, or that all of them are returning home from a group vacation, rather than welcoming back a friend for a short visit.

Another version involves fans. There’s just a handful of them, not enough to attract too much attention, but there’s no number that’s not an inconsiderable amount for a figure skater. They clutch small notebooks and pens to their chests, and delegate one representative to give him a present purchased as a result of their collective buying power. They crane their necks but stand back, giving him space, feeling lucky just to be seeing him in person instead of as a small image on a flat television screen. A representative from the Chinese Skating Association waits for him in a sharp black suit, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible as he holds out his hands and parts a path to get him from the gate to a van with tinted windows without any trouble. Once inside, Lu Han will stop and sign autographs until the driver gets impatient, and wave goodbye at the fans cheerfully, even though all they can see of him is mere moving shadows. It might have happened, once, last year, maybe in Beijing or Shanghai, but not now. He certainly won’t be informing the CSA that he’s taking a break from training. Orser might tell them that he was sent off on a forced vacation, but only after Lu Han is halfway through his trip. The federation won’t be happy about it, but they’ll also be too diplomatic and downright scared to say anything. At the airport, there won’t be a rep, and there certainly won’t be fans.

A realistic scenario sees just Minseok waiting with a thick textbook in his hands, leaning against a pillar as he reads and waits. There’s a bulge in his pockets from his car keys and phone, and Lu Han resists the urge to make an immature joke. The trip to the car is leisurely but then Minseok takes his suitcase from him to stow in the trunk, and it sets Lu Han off on a series of jokes. He teases as Minseok drives, and even though Minseok should be studying, he’ll take Lu Han to some kitschy tourist area and they’ll spend the rest of the day being as unproductive as possible. This is easily Lu Han’s favourite series of events, but that doesn’t stop him from composing more in his head. 

When Lu Han steps off the plane and into the subdued halls of the terminal, there’s a sag in his shoulders, and lethargy in his steps. People bustle past him, eager to return to the wide-open arms of their family members, rushing through walkways, up stairs, and knocking against his shoulder without a word. He’s not in Canada anymore. Lu Han’s eyes are bloodshot and his eyelids heavy and drooping. He yawns over and over again in the line up at customs, and presses the palms of his hands against his face. 

There may have been several hours to pass out on the fourteen-hour nonstop flight, but Lu Han had stayed awake, unable to stay asleep for more than a few minutes at a time, and eventually giving up to watch movies and listen to the playlist of program music that he was supposed to go through and make a decision on. 

The pounding headache blossoming in his head is making him regret not trying harder to sleep now. His skin feels dry and taut, and he pokes and prods at his face in an attempt to keep awake. There are people who make an appearance at airports, well put together with make up in place and clothes unwrinkled. Sometimes Lu Han can make the effort to look like that, but now, with his sweatpants and huge Canada Goose jacket, salt stains on his sneakers and red blotchy cheeks, he looks far from presentable.

It’s a good thing there’s no one waiting for him then. 

Any one of his imaginary situations might have been plausible if he had actually told anyone other than his coach that he was going to go through with his plan, and informed absolutely no one of the details of his flight. If his roof is provided in the form of a hotel, it makes everything seem more impermanent. Should anything go wrong, he’s a phone call away from a return flight, without bothering anyone about his accommodations. So he tells himself.

But there’s the distinct possibility that if he showed up on Minseok’s doorstep, he’d receive a frown and a, “I didn’t really expect you to come.” 

No matter how hard he tries, any image of Yixing responding to his unforeseen presence in Korea escapes him. It’s astonishing that he’s lost so much of the understanding they used to have with each other, but then again, the drifting apart wasn’t something either of them had anticipated either. 

Crowding is not exactly an issue in Toronto. The lack of population density is something Lu Han appreciates a lot, even if it seems lonely to never see other people on the street. But here, at Incheon, the crowds create an appearance of a population within the airport larger than the entire city of Toronto. 

Crowds are just as lonely as empty space.

There’s a large group of waiting youth standing behind a barrier, likely waiting for the arrival of their favourite pop idol group. Lu Han is a nobody here, and he quickly gets lost into the crowd, a single person wheeling along a single suitcase, not looking out of place at all in the throng of thousands of others, each person looking for their own destination, and none hazarding a thought to anyone else. 

Sometimes, large crowds are even lonelier than the absence of others. 

And sometimes, vast expanses of space can feel like the friendliest places on earth. 

 

 

Two large and heavy doors bar entrance to the back opening of the SM Skate Club rink, and the paint chips haven’t changed since the last time Lu Han saw them. No one will ever paint them over, in his opinion, and he doesn’t think they ever should. The hallways still have the exact same certificates, photos, and paint colours along the walls. The carpet is just as frayed and discoloured, shabby from years of small kids running along on their skates, having forgotten their blade protectors. 

On the bulletin board, the notices and advertisements have stayed much the same. The announcements might have new dates, but Lu Han still recognizes the poster for a skate-sharpening store nearby from when he first started skating with the club years ago. He hopes that if their fliers are hanging around, it means they’re still in business. 

Had he forgotten the way to cut past the change rooms and arrive at the far stands of the rink, he would have been drawn by the tinny noises of metal slicing across ice, from blades gliding and carving edges, echoing and resounding through the hallways, the sounds bouncing off of concrete walls painted tacky pastel colours.

The stands are empty. Of course, they’re supposed to be empty during practice sessions, but seeing empty stands makes Lu Han think about competitions. He takes a seat in the second row, somewhere near the middle, across from the entrance to the changing rooms. There aren’t that many people on the ice, and most of them are seniors, focused on their jumps and spins. He watches with eyes wide and heart open, noticing the skating members he recognizes, making a note of their progress in his head. He keeps his chin resting on his hand, and doesn’t ask himself why he doesn’t feel the need to be on the ice with them. 

Yixing is coming out of a sit spin when their eyes meet. He stops himself from falling over by stepping out and stumbling over his skates. Yixing wobbles up to a standing position and Lu Han laughs at him with his eyes. 

“What the hell was that?” His coach screams at him. Kim Heechul’s voice is just as piercing as it is in Lu Han’s memories. 

Yixing wobbles a bit more before getting hold of himself and pushes off toward Lu Han. Lu Han’s eyes never leave Yixing’s face and the grin plastered on his face stays too. 

“Lu Han? Am I dreaming?” Yixing asks, mouth exaggerating the movements in case Lu Han can’t hear him through the plexiglass panels.

Lu Han can hear him. He shakes his head and laughs a little at Yixing’s astonishment. 

“What do you think you’re doing, Yixing?” Heechul is continuing to shriek from across the ice, arms unfolded now and on his hips as he skates over to where Yixing is standing with his mouth open and eyes wide. 

“I did not choreograph any pauses into your program! What are you–” Heechul comes to a skidding stop when his gaze extends past Yixing’s still body and falls upon Lu Han in the stands of their skating rink, their home base.

“Holy shit, it’s Lu Han, I’m going to kill you.”

Yixing is incapable of accomplishing anything until the practice session comes to an end. Heechul shoos all the skaters off the ice and into the change rooms, although one or two try to linger on the ice and whisper to each other about the identity of the intruding guest.

Yixing is the first one off the ice, but instead of heading to the change rooms, he launches straight toward Lu Han. He runs with a weird gait since his skates are still on, skate guards thumping with a dull noise against carpet. With two giant leaps, he mounts the stands and tackles Lu Han in a hug. Lu Han feels like he’s suffocating but he laughs anyway and wraps his arms around Yixing. 

“You couldn’t have told us you were going to be back in Korea?” His former coach whines a little later, finally having lumbered over to where Lu Han is sitting. 

Yixing takes the seat beside Lu Han and props his feet up on the plastic backing of the seat in the row below. Heechul is in the row above them, peering down his nose at Lu Han. 

“So what, you could get your hair done before you saw me?” Lu Han asks with pretend innocence. Yixing snorts and Heechul smacks him in the head. 

“Not everyone in this sport is interested in your ass,” Heechul says with a roll of his eyes. “We would have had a welcome back party for you. Or someone could have picked you up at the airport at the very least.”

“Where are you staying?” Yixing asks.

“In a hotel. Don’t really want to step on anyone’s toes.”

“He means how long are you staying.” Heechul says, just as Yixing mutters, “You wouldn’t be stepping on anyone’s toes.”

“I’ve got a total of six days, but I should also go back to China and see my parents at some point.”

Yixing gives him a look and Lu Han can’t meet his eyes. 

“Almost a week then. That’s just enough time to see everyone. Do you have everyone’s phone numbers? If you treated them as well as you treated me, you kept in contact with none of them and have no clue if anyone’s changed phones,” Heechul says with a raise of his eyebrow.

“I was busy, with stuff, you know how it is,” Lu Han says with a wave of his hand. He then frowns. “Why can’t I just see everyone at the rink? Speaking of which, where is everyone anyway?”

Yixing stares at him. Heechul looks at him with his neck stuck out and mouth hanging open. 

“You mean you don’t know? When I said you hadn’t been keeping in touch, I didn’t think it was this bad. How busy could you have been to not know?”

“Know what?” Lu Han asks.

“Xiao Lu,” Yixing says, and Lu Han’s fists clench. He hasn’t heard that name in ages. “They aren’t skating anymore.” 

“Not skating anymore? What do you mean not skating anymore? What are they doing if they’re not skating?”

Yixing shoots Heechul a glance. “School. University.” He shrugs a little. Heechul is studying Lu Han like they are meeting for the first time, but doesn’t add anything.

Lu Han swallows. Minseok hadn’t mentioned anything like this to him. But then, he had never asked. “Are the others okay?” was the extent of it, and Minseok always told them they were fine. 

And it was the truth; they probably were all doing well with themselves. Lu Han, however, couldn't imagine a life without skating. In his vocabulary, the only way to be fine was to be on the ice, skating. 

“Oh. I shouldn’t be that surprised right?” Lu Han asks, willing his voice to be calm. But he is surprised, and he wonders if his face betrays that fact. Out of his friends, he was the only one who went to worlds, and did well enough at nationals to get more than one grand prix assignment. And yet, skating was what brought them together, was the string tying them when they were apart. Without skating, Lu Han can’t say with confidence that he knows who his friends are. 

“I wouldn’t say that,” Yixing shifts in his seat. “Jongin belonged on the ice, didn’t he? At the time it was a shock to all of us. It’s still weird to think about.” 

“Jongin?” Lu Han is shocked, “Kim Jongin isn’t figure skating anymore?” 

“The notice of withdrawal just showed up one day on my desk. He’s never talked to any of us about it. Sehun actually told us he was leaving in advance,” Heechul pipes in. “I shouldn’t be gossiping about my own skaters. Well, ex-skaters. But that’s how it is.”

“Are we talking about the same person? Kim Jongin, the guy whose very definition has to be figure skating? The person who was a penguin off the ice and only a normal human being on it? The one we all thought was going to take Olympic gold in 2018?” 

“You’re right to be surprised. It hit all of us without warning. And then soon afterward, Sehun decided he wasn’t going to compete this season either. With Minseok focusing half his attention on med school, it’s just us now really,” Yixing says. 

Lu Han takes it as if Yixing just punched him in the gut. “Just us.”

They sit in silence as Lu Han stumbles over words in his head, trying to wrap his thoughts around the situation before him. His emotions are threatening to overcome his carefully constructed calm and he struggles to keep from shouting.

“What happened? What changed?”

“Well you were gone for two years. A lot of things can change in two years.”

“Yeah but you don’t just wake up one day and think to yourself, you know what, that thing I’ve been doing and enjoying for my entire life? I’m just going to quit doing it.” 

“You’re right, change doesn’t happen suddenly. It’s always happening, even when no one’s looking. But I guess you only notice at a drop of a hat, when you think to look.” 

“I can’t believe it. They just, what? Lost their love of skating? Slowly weaned themselves of interest? Built up their hatred over time? There’s no way. Something must have happened.” 

“Maybe something did. But sometimes it’s just like a dam that bursts, all the small things that shouldn’t matter add up to more than the sum of their parts.” 

“I don’t…I didn’t…Do you still talk to them?” 

Yixing shrugs a little more. “I see them, sometimes. Things are different now, as can only be expected.”

The press of a warm hand on his shoulder makes Lu Han stare at Heechul, whose facial expression Lu Han can’t read. He lowers his head. 

“Why are you back in Korea, Lu Han?”

Lu Han looks at his hands. They’re trembling, fingers vibrating up and down, and fingers shaking. His mouth shapes around an answer but it tastes like a lie and he swallows his words back down.

Heechul doesn’t wait to hear what he has to say anyway. He stands and pulls Yixing up by the shoulders. “Well come on then, let’s get something to eat.” 

“Alright, I’m starving!” 

When Yixing emerges from the changing room ten minutes later, the parking lot is much emptier and Heechul and Lu Han wait beside Heechul’s silver Hyundai. 

“Both of you in the back, no complaining, no distracting me, or else!” Heechul threatens while waving his car keys way too close to Lu Han’s eyes, after Yixing shoves his duffel bag into the back. 

Lu Han sits rather without complaints, happy to lean his head back against the headrest, press his fingertips into the firm leather seats, and take a chance to breathe. Yixing buckles himself in before fussing over Lu Han and Heechul’s seatbelts while Heechul complains that this was included in things that were not allowed. 

“Where are we headed?” Yixing asks when Heechul stops feeling indignant, and steers their way onto the main street. 

“I thought we were going to eat?” Lu Han replies, fingers curled against the edge of his seat.

“You’d be lying if you said that you didn’t come to Korea strictly for the food. Admit it, you’re just a giant black hole.

“Um,” Lu Han says to buy time, “I need to be well nourished and have proper nutrition to perform at my best?”

Yixing does not roll his eyes, even though Lu Han had glanced at him to check if he would. “If only you were as capable of taking care of yourself. Where are you staying anyway?”

“A hotel near Myeongdong I think?”

“You think?” 

“Yeah, sometimes I’m capable of brain function too, you know,” Lu Han retorts without thinking, his thumbs circling each other as they drive through somewhat familiar streets. 

Heechul tells Yixing to throw something at Lu Han, and Yixing is all smiles as he whacks him in the back of the head with a box of tissues. Heechul cheers and sticks his tongue out while looking at Lu Han through the rear view mirror.

“Didn’t you say you didn’t want to be distracted?” Lu Han whines.

“He totally did!” Yixing adds helpfully, and proceeds to whack Heechul with the tissue box as well. “Pay attention to the road,” he warns in a singsong voice, and Lu Han pokes him in the dimple to wipe the smile off his face. 

 

 

“Under no circumstances should I find Yixing unable to function at one hundred percent in training tomorrow. That means that he should be on time, awake, and not experiencing any undue pain,” Heechul warns Lu Han when he drops them off.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” Lu Han asks, and his fingers the slip of paper that Heechul had shoved into his pocket. He sneaks a look and spots a series of numbers before shoving it back into his jeans.

“Please, I have to maintain a professional working relationship with all of my students.”

“He means he’s old and doesn’t know how to have fun anymore.” 

“I am not old, I am eternally beautiful, and you are only several years younger than I am!” 

“Don’t worry, Lu Han’s getting just as wrinkly as you,” Yixing says calmly, before shooting Lu Han a serene smile. “Bye, coach!” He says, before making his way toward a street food cart.

Heechul peers at Lu Han’s face, scowls, and then reaches up to flatten the wrinkles in his own forehead. 

“I have way better skin than you,” Heechul says, as if it were a matter of fact. 

“I guess those anti-aging creams are helping, huh?” Lu Han says, and laughs as he jogs to join Yixing.

“Brats!” Heechul screams after them, “All of you! Ungrateful brats! Don’t forget that I made you, Lu Han!” 

Lu Han grabs a skewer of fishcakes from Yixing’s hands and waves it in front of him. 

“Come on, let’s find a place where I can rent a phone for the next week.” 

They wander without any urgency, taking slow steps to keep pace behind other shoppers, and make frequent stops whenever anything catches their eye. It doesn’t take very long for Lu Han to choose a phone (just one that matches the one he uses in Toronto so there’s no learning curve for how to use a new device), and he gets a cheap prepaid plan.

“I have a phone in the hotel too, so if I run out of minutes or something, it’s no big deal.”

Yixing is the first person to get his hands on the phone, taking a weird picture of himself with the front facing camera with puffed out cheeks and half lidded eyes. He saves his number with the photo and Lu Han slides the phone into the same pocket as the one with the phone number Heechul had written down for him. 

He doesn’t remember it until after they’ve had enough food to constitute at least three meals and Lu Han’s mouth is singing with the tastes of Korea that he had almost forgotten, eating alone in his apartment in Toronto. The taste of sweet and spicy, salty and sour, fried, stewed, and all over rice tastes more like the word home than anything he can cook for himself. It’s kimchi over baicai, jjajangmyun over zhajiangmian, mandu over jiaozi, and his youth over his childhood. 

Yixing orders another plate of spicy ddeokbeokki and a bottle of soju while Lu Han shoves greasy fingers into his pants and tilts his head back to look up. It’s the same stars as those you see in Canada, but the sky is different here. His fingers brush up against the scrap of paper and Heechul’s face appears in his mind’s eye, judgemental and yet uncritical. The piece of paper in his pocket feels like responsibility. 

Lu Han sighs and Yixing shoves his filled glass of soju in his face. Lu Han laughs and pushes Yixing’s hand away. 

“I was under clear instructions to keep you hangover free for practice tomorrow morning. Heechul is going to skin me if you get plastered.”

“Just one more drink? Come on little Lu, you can do it,” Yixing encourages.

“Whether or not I can handle more alcohol is not the question, it doesn’t matter if _I_ wake up at eleven with a pounding headache, but you’ve got practice at seven in the morning,” Lu Han says, and plucks a nearly empty bottle from Yixing’s hand. “Does it make things better if I pay?”

Yixing’s smile is very telling. “You’re just as old as Heechul,” Yixing says to him with a sideward glance, “I’m surrounded by all these wrinkly old men.” He sighs and Lu Han kicks at him underneath the table. He misses. 

“Well, I guess that makes me the best catch. I always knew there would be a good reason I made friends with you, Lu Han!” Yixing climbs out of his seat, pushing himself up from the table. This time, when Lu Han aims his kick, he doesn’t miss.

Yixing is still hobbling on his leg for show when they get to the main road and Lu Han tries to flag down a taxi. 

“I’m pretty sure this counts as rendering me non-functional. What are you going to do when Heechul finds out you kicked me so hard that I have to be out of practice for an entire day?”

“I’ll tell him you’re a drama queen, he’ll agree with me because he’s glad that he’s no longer the one with that title, and then you’ll be forced to do double the jumping drills.” 

Yixing laughs and puts an arm around Lu Han’s shoulder. “Seriously, you’ve lost all your fun since moving to Canada. You’re turning into Minseok on me, all serious and stuff.” 

Lu Han snorts and then pushes him off his shoulder and into a cab. Yixing grabs his wrist after Lu Han hands him cash to pay for the fare, and Lu Han pauses.

“Hey, I’ve missed you. I’m glad you’re back.”

Lu Han smiles. “It’s good to be home.”

He closes the door and lifts a hand in goodbye as Yixing disappears into the night before hailing his own taxi. The smile never leaves his face as he stares out a window at the lights in Seoul at night, or even when he gets stuck in a corner of the lift in the hotel because someone’s too big luggage gets in the way. It couldn’t matter how many things went wrong in this trip now, he was home, and home ice was always the kinder ice. 

From his wallet he pulls out his key card and lets himself in, nearly tripping over the suitcase he had left on the floor in the dark. He groans and takes two tries to get his body to agree to take a shower and brush his teeth before changing into pyjamas and diving onto the huge and utterly luxurious bed. The time difference is catching up with him now that there’s no one to distract him. But the phone on the bedside table and the phone number are still beckoning to him and he crawls over to get the phone call over with.

The silence as he dials is a little loud and intimidating, and even when he presses the phone to his ear and the sound of ringing fills the silence of the hotel room, it still feels ominous. Lu Han fiddles with the sheets on the bed, and taps his finger against the back of the phone. The trouble is that Heechul hadn’t written down a name, so he doesn’t know for certain who he’s calling, but he has a hunch, and enough alcohol in him to make this seem like a good idea. 

After a final ring, Lu Han finally gets a voice. 

A cool female voice delivers the automated message “You have reached the voice mailbox of,” There’s a pause, and Lu Han holds his breath. “‘Kim Jongin’. After the tone, please leave a message.” 

Lu Han startles at the sound of the beep, and his mind races to come up with something to say. He looks upward and fidgets some more with his pillows as he starts, trying to keep his voice light and chipper.

“Hey Jongin, this is Lu Han. I hope you haven’t forgotten me,” he jokes, and winces at how pathetic he sounds. He runs the fingers of his left hand through his bangs and tugs a little. 

“I’m back in Korea for a few days, and was wondering if you wanted to catch up?” That sounds a little presumptuous to him and he quickly adds, “I mean, if you’re around and free and interested, of course! So um, yeah, give me a call.” 

As soon as he hangs up, Lu Han painfully realizes that he had forgot to leave his own number, and in fact isn’t sure what his number is anyway. He sighs and crashes back down on the bed with a thud, covering his eyes with his forearm and wishing desperately that Heechul had given him some idea of what to expect. 

 

 

The first thing Minseok does when he sees Lu Han in the morning is throw a balled up towel at his face. Lu Han flinches and it catches him against the neck. He doesn’t get a chance to bend down and pick it up because he spots Minseok and charges at him for a running hug. 

Lu Han squeezes his arms around Minseok’s back and plants his feet firmly in the ground, expecting to be pushed away after a moment, but to his surprise, a hand clasps around his neck, and another against the back of his head. Lu Han lifts Minseok off the ground briefly in excitement at being hugged back before remembering himself and hurriedly putting him back down. 

“Who do you think you are to just show up here, all unannounced, and without your skates on?” Minseok teases. 

“The love of your life, probably,” Heechul says, coming up from behind them and poking both of them in the ribs. “Stop distracting my skaters kid, not all of us can afford to be as easy going about practice as you. Come on, hop to it doc, gonna work jumping passes today.” 

Lu Han sticks his tongue out behind Heechul’s back and Minseok laughs. Their eyes meet and Minseok makes a face back. “Really you’re not going to be skating while you’re here?” 

It’s not meant to be a challenge, but Lu Han feels nauseous at the thought and shakes his head. “I can’t even stand the thought of lacing up a pair of skates right now, forget trying to get me to do anything constructive on the ice.”

“Huh, and you just thought you’d show up at the ice rink anyway?”

“Yeah, well.” Lu Han doesn’t really have anything to say to that. 

“I guess home is where the ice is,” Minseok says, with a raised eyebrow, before removing his skate guards and setting off onto the ice. Heechul joins him shortly after and Lu Han stands alone at the edge of the boards, arms crossed in front of his chest, and staring so hard that his vision blurs and the skaters become little specks. They blur when they spin and move too quickly for him to follow, and it lulls him into a more relaxed state than sleep has granted him in weeks. 

Time passes by without him noticing, until someone comes up from behind him and shoves him in the shoulder. Lu Han has to uncross his arms and reach for the boards to steady himself and avoid falling over.

“Oops,” Yixing says from behind him with a giggle and doesn’t look apologetic at all. 

“I swear I sent you home early enough to not be this late for practice,” Lu Han says.

“And I swear there’s nothing going on the rink for you to get that distracted,” Yixing retorts.

“Not really paying attention. I’m looking but I’m not seeing, you know? It’s just. The ice is just a magnet.” He stops himself from saying home just in time.

“You need to get a life. Or laid, I’m not sure which yet. I think the problem is that you’re too attached to skating. There is an entire world out there that has never even seen someone so much as twirl in skates, and all you can think about half the time is your goddamn quad salchow.” Yixing is sniping meaninglessly at him but his eyes are scanning the ice. “Oh, well I see why you were so distracted now.” 

“What?” Lu Han asks, “What are you talking about?” And he means that to everything Yixing just said, there was a point in there somewhere, maybe, although knowing Yixing maybe not, whatever it was, it had flown straight over Lu Han’s head.

Yixing hums. “So anyway, what do you think Minseok needs to work on right now?” 

“His jump technique has gotten sloppy, like it’s been overworked and needs to be relearned from the basics. None of the positions look natural, and he’s relying too much on his knees to save his landings. Plus, I’m pretty sure – what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Haven’t been paying attention right? You’re looking, little Lu, but you’re not seeing.” Yixing tuts and mock salutes him before heading toward Heechul and his inevitable hissy fit. 

Lu Han wants to yell something at his retreating back, determined not to let him have the last word, but the vibration of the phone in his pocket startles him. Minseok, Yixing, and Heechul are all in the rink, which means that the person contacting him can only be one person. Lu Han thumbs the password to unlock his phone and doesn’t bother to check who the message is from before tapping on it with his thumb.

It’s a short text. There’s simply a time and date, as well as a location. It’s good enough for Lu Han, satisfied with the response. His spine tingles a little as he quickly sends back confirmation that he’ll be there. 

“What’s got you so smug?” Minseok says from in front of him, pulling into a hard t-stop and sending a spray of ice all over Lu Han’s jeans. 

“Nothing, just a text.”

Minseok snorts. “Yeah, from who?”

“What, jealous?” 

Minseok rolls his eyes. “You wish,” he says. “I’m frankly surprised that you have friends other than us to talk to.” 

“I’ll have you know I’m exceptionally well loved by everyone I meet, no matter where I go.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I’ve met you and stuff. Come on, it’s time for lunch.”

His brain has to process something at that moment that he’s not prepared to think about. He looks up at the giant clock overhead and realizes that somehow, two hours have passed by without him noticing. ‘ _Don’t think it, don’t think it, just don’t think about it,_ ’ he whispers to his brain, but it still helpfully points out that he can spend hours thinking about Minseok’s skating and not be conscious of the fact. 

“Yixing,” he snaps, and grabs onto his elbow while he’s coming off the ice, “please explain to me why my brain is starting to sound like you.”

Someone starts laughing like a hyena at him and he turns around and sends Heechul the deadliest glare he can muster.

“Shut up.”

“Not,” and Heechul can’t even finish whatever the thought was from wheezing too hard.

“You shut up too,” Lu Han says, tightening his grip on Yixing’s arm. 

Yixing mimes zipping his lips and winks at him. ‘ _It doesn’t matter if he shuts up, I still sound like him, remember?_ ’ his brain reminds him, and he pulls on the arm in his grasp so he can use Yixing’s hand to smack himself in the face. 

Minseok takes Lu Han shopping in the afternoon; even though he has exams to study for and Lu Han could manage to navigate the streets of Seoul just fine on his own. They wander around with plastic cups of iced coffee in their hands, pace slow and easygoing no matter how the other shoppers jostle them in their hurry. 

Lu Han takes his time closely inspecting all the bags in as many brand name stores as possible, and doesn’t buy a single thing. Minseok doesn’t roll his eyes at all the criticisms and complaints Lu Han has for nothing being perfect enough, and accepts the stupid looking hat Lu Han buys him from a street vendor. 

“You’re getting to be no fun,” Lu Han pouts after they snap a picture together, making weird faces at the camera in their silly animal hats. Minseok doesn’t even pretend to be embarrassed to be wearing it in public.

“It’s easier this way, if I don’t react, then you don’t get your fix, and I get to go home relatively unscathed,” he mentions, twirling one of the pompoms between his fingers.

“Oh is that your strategy? Then I’ll just have to do increasingly ridiculous things until I manage a rise out of you, won’t I?” 

He doesn’t manage to come up with any more ideas because they get waylaid by a video arcade. Lu Han’s face instantly lights up at the sound of artificial laser guns and is grabs Minseok forcefully by the hand, tugging them inside and buying them stacks of coins.

“This is amazing, they don’t have these things in Canada, and I didn’t think I’d miss stuff like this, but absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he says, pushing in the requisite three coins for them to start a street fighter match. 

“Have you even been out and around enough in Canada to make overarching statements like that? I’m sure you’ve been outside only to get between your bed and the ice and no where else, knowing you. Maybe there are arcades just lined up but you just don’t notice,” Minseok replies over the loud noises coming from all around them. He’s cold and calculating and carefully trounces Lu Han with precise kicks and combos.

Lu Han gets worse and worse as he goes, button mashing without any finesse, and having decreasing effect the more frustrated he gets that he’s not winning.

“I can’t believe you won, I’ll have you know that my technique is usually unbeatable.”

Minseok gives him a look and picks up the air hockey mallet with trepidation. 

“Are you talking about your utter lack of technique?” 

“Yeah whatever, we’ll see how you do against me in this. I live in the land where pucks are worth their weight in gold.” He manages to get a puck past Minseok’s defense and pumps his fist in the air.

“Did you somehow learn miniaturized hockey by osmosis?” 

“I think it’s a necessity in Canada, like, if you’re bad at hockey you get deported.” He manages to score another point and whoops manically. 

“I know for a fact,” Minseok reminds him, “that the first pair of figure skates you ever tried were a pair of hand-me-downs from your mom’s friend’s daughter. You personally told me you tried to play hockey with other boys at the rink but it was already too late and you couldn’t figure out hockey skates, so I feel like your chances of success in hockey? Pretty slim. Unless you’re only here because you’ve already been deported.”

Unfortunately, Lu Han doesn’t even scowl at him, doesn’t even bother to acknowledge that he said anything. At the end of the game, Lu Han’s score is 10 to Minseok’s 1 and they’ve evened out in the playing field.

“Up for a game of foosball?” Lu Han asks him.

“You have no idea what you’re up against, because I am the king of foosball.” 

Minseok exaggerates, but he still manages to edge out Lu Han, whose foosball technique is rather similar to button mashing. He spins the handles with enough vigour that Minseok can feel it from his side of the table and gets lucky enough of the time to make a dent in the scoreboard. Minseok manages to eke out a victory, but just barely.

When they finish a round of a first person shooter that has them tag teaming against virtual opponents, and then go around at a motorcycle racing game, it’s late enough to be considering dinner and they find themselves a sit down restaurant specializing in tofu stew.

Lu Han watches Minseok eat unabashedly, eyes trailing over his lips and tongue. He marvels, not for the first time, at how time can fly past without his notice whenever he’s with Minseok or even simply thinking about him. Minseok catches him staring and raises an eyebrow at him.

“What, not eating? Korean food not good enough now that you’ve gotten used to a diet of hamburgers and doughnuts?”

Lu Han shakes his head and laughs.

“I’ve missed this,” he says, with a degree of vagueness and an ambiguous wave of his hand. Minseok doesn’t ask what ‘this’ is, but he probably knows it has nothing to do with what they’re eating.

 

 

His alarm wakes him up for his rendezvous with Jongin without him needing to hit snooze twice. When he arrives (on time and in the right place) Jongin isn’t looking his direction. Lu Han spots just the top of his head at first, a messy mop of hair dyed brown and curling at the ends while Jongin stares at passers-by out the window. 

Lu Han slips into the chair across from him as smoothly as he can, and Jongin jumps in his seat, startled out of his reverie as if he wasn’t expecting anyone to join him. When he sees Lu Han, his shoulders lower, and his eyes become less guarded. 

“Hey,” Lu Han says just loudly enough to be heard over the din of the café. “You look good.” 

What he means is Jongin looks healthy, his skin, which Lu Han remembers as simultaneously acne covered and dry, has a healthy glow. He looks sleepy but not exhausted, the way Lu Han remembers he always looked, with the bags under his eyes ready to droop off his face, dark and visible even when covered with concealer.

“Lu Han,” Jongin says in disbelief, “Wow it’s actually you.”

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Sorry I haven’t kept in touch.” Lu Han says, and tries to smile less awkwardly than he feels. 

“Yeah. Yeah, you look great too,” Jongin says in a rush. Lu Han’s looked in the mirror this morning, he knows he still looks like microwaved road kill but he appreciates the sentiment. “Not to be rude or anything, but what are you doing back in Korea? I thought you were training in Canada now?” 

“I’m technically on vacation, but I think I was exiled because my coach got sick of me moping,” Lu Han says, honest and open. He doesn’t feel like he needs to pretend he’s okay for Jongin’s sake, which is kind of nice after everyone else has asked him how he’s doing. 

“Moping?”

“I’m sure you saw, the crashing and burning, disappointing everyone and whatever.”

“Actually, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t skated or followed anything in the community in months.”

“It’s really nothing,” Lu Han says, pretending not to watch Jongin toy with the handle of his coffee mug, eyes downcast, shoving the niggling feeling as far down inside him as possible. There’s a waiter flitting nearby who looks like he’s itching to get Lu Han’s order so he points at Jongin’s cup, mouthing ‘the same’. The waiter looks relieved.

“Um,” Jongin starts, and then abandons his train of thought.

“So uh, what have you been up to? How have you been?”

“Uh good, good, pretty decent anyway. Trying to live a normal university student life. Not that figure skating isn’t normal, I just,” he trails off and fidgets in his seat, frowning at himself for not being able to say what he means.

“It’s not the typical lifestyle at any rate, I know what you mean.”

Jongin nods, but doesn’t meet Lu Han’s eyes. They don’t say anything to each other for several minutes. The waiter comes by with Lu Han’s drink, and Lu Han thanks him but doesn’t make any attempt to take a sip. Jongin’s cup is nearly empty and he searches for something to do with his hands. 

“Are you enjoying school?” Lu Han asks, and Jongin chokes on his coffee in his rush to answer. He coughs twice.

“Yeah, it’s great. I really like all my profs and I’m rooming with Sehun so we do a whole lot of nothing. Basically it’s just hanging out most of the time,” he says and guffaws nervously. 

“I didn’t know you were rooming with Sehun.”

“Oh yeah, Yixing didn’t tell you? I thought he would have, if he gave you my number.”

“Hm, Yixing didn’t really mention anything. Heechul gave me your number, actually.” Lu Han taps a fingernail against the side of his cup.

“Really? Coach did? Huh. I would have expected – well that doesn’t matter, I was going to say, Yixing comes over sometimes and we kind of just jam and do random stuff in the dorms, and you’re welcome to join us if you’re around. It’s kind of a mess, but then, you’ve seen the inside of my gym bag. Sehun’s even worse than I am, you already know that though,” Jongin says and laughs, “Between the two of us our dorm is a disaster zone but I think you’d get a kick out of just finding somewhere to sit where there wasn’t dirty laundry.” 

Lu Han laughs along with him, and rests his chin on the palm of his hand, elbow leaning on the table. “My schedule’s been kind of ‘make it up as you go along’ so far, so I might just show up.”

He remembers this Jongin, young and bright, always laughing. Back when Lu Han had first started in the senior B’s and Jongin was an up-and-coming in the junior competitions. Over time Jongin had become serious and brooding, but Lu Han had always attributed it to growing up and maturing. He never would have thought that he could see Jongin as an actual teenager, not after the pressure and injuries Jongin had overcome. 

Out of the entire old crowd at the club, Jongin was the one he expected to be competing against, maybe even his biggest rival. Certainly his fiercest competition inside the club, and if Lu Han had ever performed better, it was only because he was older and not because he worked harder or had more talent. Even if the rest of the world didn’t know it, the figure skating scene losing Kim Jongin was one with a giant gaping hole, one which Lu Han couldn’t imagine anyone else filling. 

The Korean skating team would surely miss Jongin sorely, having gone from their delegation meant only ever having one men’s berth in international competition, and he wonders if the Korean Skating Union had endorsed his leave.

Jongin clears his throat and asks, “So how have you been? I mean, outside of, you know, skating.” 

Lu Han takes a second to consider this, and he’s not entirely sure what to say. He’s not sure he’s been anything other than skating for a very long time, and his moods and feelings are always dependent on the conditions of skating at the time. 

“I’m not sure, I guess I haven’t thought about it.”

“Come on, you don’t need to think about things to have feelings. Or do you really not know life outside of figure skating?”

It’s the second time someone’s insinuated it on his trip here, that there was life outside of the skating world, and that Lu Han hadn’t managed to find it yet.

“It’s all I’ve known, the only thing I can remember since I was a kid, I can’t…”

“Didn’t you ever wonder? Didn’t you ever want to get away from that and see if there was something else? Everyone around us without skating in their lives was so happy, didn’t you ever think there was something else to it all, that this couldn’t be it?” Jongin asks, frustrated. Lu Han notes with some irony that he has no trouble meeting his eyes anymore.

“You wanted to talk about this, didn’t you? They told you I wasn’t skating anymore and you wanted to know why. You don’t even know who I am other than the skater I was,” Jongin accuses. 

Lu Han puts his hands up but it’s the truth, and it rings hollowly in his ears even as he lies to himself that it isn’t. 

“Did you send me a single email after you left?”

“No but –” 

“Did you send any of us an email? Face it, you dropped us without a second thought.”

Jongin doesn’t let Lu Han cut in no matter how many noises Lu Han makes. Not that Lu Han has particularly insightful interjections, but he feels like he should be saying something to defend himself. 

“In fact, you wouldn’t even know my name if it weren’t for the fact that I was a skater. And I’ll be honest, I don’t know a thing about you outside of skating, because you’ve never told me a single thing that didn’t involve a pair of blades.” 

“Jongin, that’s not fair.” He wants to point out that he considers all of them his friends, but it’s a flimsy excuse. They’re friends by proximity and by default, if that. 

“Yeah, you want to know what else isn’t fair? You don’t even like skating. You act like figure skating is something pinning you down, like it’s a burden, but you’re still doing it, like you’re bound to it. That kills me, it kills me because I loved figure skating, I loved it so much that I couldn’t keep doing it. You wanna know why I quit? I’ll tell you. They gave me an offer. Here, let this jet take you across the world to some spiffy place in Detroit, we’ll pay you lots of money from tons of sponsors. Those assholes told me they thought I was good, as if I needed them to tell me that, that I could become the next _you_ if I wanted to,” Jongin takes a long shuddering breath. 

Lu Han’s stomach heaves at the look Jongin gives him, _hurt_ , and Lu Han thinks ‘ _it’s not my fault,_ ’ but he feels guilty.

“Like hell that was what I wanted! In their eyes I was going to become some, some circus animal that did cool jump stunts, and brought back championship trophies so they could draw in money. That wasn’t, that’s not figure skating. I just wanted to skate, I didn’t want some medal or fierce competition, I just wanted to do something I really enjoyed and they zapped the love for the sport right out of me. That’s why I quit. I had to find something new to love.” 

There’s a silence that settles between them as a waiter sidesteps as far away from their table as possible, and Jongin’s grip on his cup remains tight enough to shatter porcelain. Lu Han’s mind is reeling, and he’s trying to be on the defensive, willing himself to wrack up some detail of Jongin’s life that didn’t have to do with skating, but he can’t think of it. He doesn’t have friends outside of the sport, and he sure as hell doesn’t have memories of anything else either. 

“I’m sorry,” he blurts, and he’s staring at Jongin’s chest, which is rising and falling steadily as he recovers from his rant still. 

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Jongin says sharply. “I should be apologizing for speaking like that to you.”

“I should have, I should have done something,” Lu Han grapples at straws.

“Whatever you should have, you probably couldn’t have, and in any case it’s too late anyway. I made my choice already.” Jongin leans back in his seat, shoulders drooping, and eyes defeated. Lu Han’s mind functions solely with figure skating analogies and he can’t stop himself from thinking that he looks like he just finished a long run-through of a program. 

They sit, stealing glances at each other, while Lu Han pushes his thumbs against each other. He has an answer to his question, but he’s not sure the answer’s something he really wanted to hear. 

“I have class soon, so I’d better get going. Come around with Yixing this weekend, okay? Just to see what people can do to have fun. And you have my number, so now that I’ve finished stepping over my bounds and lecturing you when I have no place, don’t pretend to be a stranger.” Jongin’s face softens as he lays down some bills to pay for his drink. “There are other things to mope about, and believe it or not, other reasons to be happy. There are things in life beyond skating, and there’s more to people than their skating. I wish you’d see that.”

He finishes packing up his things and leaves Lu Han sitting alone, eyes glazed over as he tries to organize the thoughts that have been strewn around by Jongin’s whirlwind performance. It’s a long time after his coffee grows cold that he moves at all, to wave someone over so he can pay. When he finally deals with the tab and leaves, he hasn’t consumed a thing, and he feels full to the point of puking. 

 

 

“Do you have tickets for China?” 

“No.”

“Does your mom know you’re not in Canada right now?”

“No.”

“So you’re planning on surprising her?”

“No.”

“You’re not going back to visit your family. I don’t know why I thought you’d actually do the right thing for once.”

“Look, just because you’re family has been supportive and you’re a great son who’s the shining example of filial piety doesn’t mean every family functions like that.”

That was the end of the conversation he’d had with Yixing, and Lu Han decided he would tag along on the playdate instead of going to see his parents. It’s been at least as long as since the last time he’d seen Yixing, he had calculated that when Yixing asked, but otherwise he tries not to think about his parents at all, unless he can help it. 

Jongin lets them in and Sehun squeals delightedly, complete with arm flailing and a hybrid one arm over shoulder the other around the waist hug for Lu Han.

“I haven’t seen you in literally ages,” he gushes, before turning around to beam at Yixing.

Lu Han’s too busy looking at Jongin and rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck to notice the tight smile and small headshake Yixing gives Sehun, squeezing his shoulders gently to reassure him.

Jongin coughs a little, blushes, and beckons for everyone to follow him.

“It’s tiny so this tour will be quick. My room, Sehun’s room, bathroom, common room, kitchenette. That’s literally the entire place. Don’t open the doors to any of our rooms, you’re going to find month old unlaundered socks and the smell will make you sick for days, I promise.” 

“This is great, it’s actually lived in. I kind of wish I had a roommate,” Lu Han says. 

“No, you really don’t.” Jongin informs him, before dragging them all into the kitchenette. 

“Jongin found a recipe for hot cakes,” Sehun announces gleefully, “and we went shopping for all the ingredients. So we’re going to bake.”

Sure, baking, that sounded easy.

Lu Han takes back that thought when Sehun manages to get bits of eggshell into the mix while he’s cracking an egg. 

“So…Is anyone up for some strangely crunchy pancakes?” He asks innocently.

They manage to pick out the pieces but by the time the mix is done Lu Han is frowning.

“I don’t really think this is supposed to be so lumpy. Did someone get the measurements wrong?” 

“This is not supposed to be this difficult,” Jongin manages through his bewilderment at the state of the pancake mix, “it was rated an easy recipe on the website, I honestly wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise.”

“Clearly whoever was writing the instructions had not taken into consideration he serious lack of competency some of their readers might suffer.” Yixing raps his knuckles lightly on the top of Sehun’s head, but his look is fond and his tone is teasing rather than severe.

Sehun yelps and pokes Yixing in the cheek with an egg whites covered finger. “You got flour in my hair!”

Yixing wrinkles his nose. “Yes, and now I have egg streaked across my face,” he says matter of factly.

Jongin cheers from the sidelines, “Food fight!” Lu Han thinks this is a good a time as any to rub sugar on the back of his neck. “Oh it is _on_.”

It feels like the next few moments are in slow motion, and then suddenly Lu Han finds himself covered in milk. His eyes narrow. He hefts the egg in his hand and lobs it toward Jongin, who ducks. The egg smacks against Sehun’s shoulder and oozes over his sweater. 

It’s all out war from there.

The remnants of the bag of flour they had purchased (“we can do this again, maybe bake a cake next time!” Or not) were either in someone’s hair or covering the countertop. There are eggs smashed against cabinet doors and one cracked open on the floor which had been responsible for Yixing slipping and squishing his nose against Sehun’s collarbone in the fall. Sehun had taken the opportunity to use Yixing as a human shield against Lu Han’s prepared attack, and Jongin had succeeded in tackling them all to the ground, crowing victory even as Lu Han smeared whatever was on his fingers all over his face.

“Rock paper scissors to see who has to clean up this mess?” Jongin suggests. 

Sehun loses, and looks like he’s out for murder.

The worst part is probably how awful the pancakes taste.

“Not even maple syrup could save these,” Lu Han says with a sad sort of smile. His tongue doesn’t detect any taste, but his teeth are overwhelmed by the strange texture as he chews. He puts down his fork and forces himself to swallow the mouthful he took.

“Yeah, yeah, you fancy Canadian with your fancy toppings. This was a great idea.”

The best part is that Lu Han doesn’t consider it to be a waste of time at all. He doesn’t think to himself that it would be better if he were training, not once, and it’s an improvement. 

He doesn’t say as much on the car ride to the airport, Minseok driving him to drop him off so that there’s someone there and he doesn’t have to be alone. He tells him what happens with the pancakes though, and Minseok is honest when he says, “I think I’m speaking for all of us when I saw we’re glad you visited.”

“I think I’m glad too.” 

 

 

It takes less than a week for Toronto to transition from blizzards to temperatures in the double digits. There are people on the streets wearing sleeveless shirts already, jackets put way in the backs of closets to make way for summer wear. The ground is green again, the grass reviving after a winter under several feet of snow, and the leaves of early tulips are starting to sprout in gardens. Toronto is waking up from a deep sleep, colours bleeding back into the landscape, filling in the spaces where previously there was only white, and adding to the bare browns. 

Lu Han gets a front seat view of the revival, wakes up at the same time the birds start chirping, and opens his curtains to see a few more leaf buds every day. The days are longer as well, and when he returns home from practice, there’s still light, and he walks facing the setting sun. 

His first steps back on the ice feel good. It’s a good feeling that spreads all the way down to the tips of his freezing toes, and he carries on no matter how many times he falls, regardless of how hard the fall is or how bruised his body becomes. Prolonged exposure gives skating familiarity, and Lu Han defiantly believes Jongin was wrong. He has to like skating, if only for the sense of comfort it brings him, because he doesn’t feel as at ease doing anything else.

David hands him two CDs in unmarked plastic covers. Blue permanent marker covers the faces of the discs, numbers clear, and letters in writing too messy for him to make out.

“Homework,” he says with a smile. 

But this is Lu Han’s favourite part of the off-season, because anything seems possible. The outlook is positive, and good program music with the right choreography is just the beginning. 

“It’s not so bad,” he replies.

“Well then, fun homework. But still something for you to take with you and finish,” David amends. 

So the birds chirp outside, and he imagines it’s the ones he can see from the panes of the window in his bedroom that are singing the sounds emitted by his headphones. The noises of the world drowned out by the intense orchestral symphonies, and delicate piano melodies. 

As always, nearly all the selections David nominates are movie soundtracks, including numerous Nino Rota numbers, from _The Godfather_ , and the painfully memorable ‘What is a Youth’ tune from _Romeo and Juliet_. The Ennio Morricone piece is familiar in a way he can’t put his finger on, but he hits skip no more than a minute into the piece, and doesn’t note the number down.

He has a system, it’s not a scientific process by any means, but he prefers to do it like this. First, he whittles down the list by half from first impressions alone. David once told him that he should give some of the pieces he doesn’t take to immediately another listen, some time to warm up to him. Lu Han understands the importance of first impressions, because if it doesn’t click with him the first time, then chances are it won’t work for the audience or the judges either, whom don’t give him another shot.

The second step is to visualize himself with each piece. This takes longer, half a day with each song at least, where he listens to it everywhere he goes, eyes closed and picturing the ice in his mind. 

“Your visual-spatial sketchpad,” David had said to him once when he tried to describe the procedure, and Lu Han nodded along without really understanding.

The problem with pieces, sometimes, is even if you like them, they’re not something you can skate to. The arc or the climax doesn’t fit in right, or you can’t envision yourself becoming intimately acquainted with all the intricacies and dedicating months to this single musical number. With other pieces, he can already see a fully formed choreography before David tells him a single thing. Just here at this transition would be great to tie in contrasting elements, and this moment definitely deserves a jumping pass, or, this particular rhythm demands a step sequence, and the ending absolutely must conclude with an upright spin. 

It’s the small connections he can make which determine whether the pieces will go the final round, like when he can feel the smooth slide of a blade edge on the ice underneath him, or hear the impact of a jump coinciding appropriately with a cymbal crash. 

Sometimes he gets worried that none of them will click with him, nothing making a resounding impact, and that they’ll be stuck in music selection limbo for as long as the off-season lasts. Lu Han runs calculations in his mind of how the numbers will add up for him, and time is never on their side. The first test run of the free program will probably be during the grand prix series, and as soon as the season’s upon you, you hit the ground running. You can tweak and adjust but there isn’t enough freedom to make overarching changes and you get stuck with things you might not like.

It’s a risk he’s prepared to take. Once he was old enough and interested enough, his coaches brought him on board for the designing process. Since then, he’s always had the final say in any artistic decisions, down to the millimeter positions of the tiny sequins on his costume, although he’s never chosen to veto anything yet. During his time in the junior competitions, when he was younger, if David had asked him to give a certain song another try, Lu Han would have been easily swayed. Eventually, through time, and desperation not to disappoint the adults in his life, his coach’s preferred piece would be his own favourite. This way, his current progression, is a more organic way of coming to a conclusion. Orser is convinced that if the seed comes from the skater, they’re more likely to want to watch it grow.

The third and final piece of the puzzle is inexplicable using words. It’s about the feeling, when it comes down to just a few song choices, the response in his gut, some imaginary voice whispering _this is it_ that comes maybe with one and not the other. All things considered, it’s rather like the process of selecting romantic partners. In some ways, it’s more impersonal, like the choreographer’s fee that goes along, and the knowledge that the time he spends with the music has an expiration limit. All the same, there’s a requisite commitment level that makes the task more than light-hearted work.

“So that’s it then,” he murmurs, and pretends the birds outside are nodding back at him. 

This is a conversation he can only have with himself, after all, just personal enough that he wouldn’t even consider asking his friends for their input. In singles skating, you enter centre stage by yourself, and no one is there to support you. 

“The stage is set, it’s time to send in some clowns.”

From the genuine grin he receives, Lu Han can tell it was a good decision.

David rubs his fingers against the stubble along his jaw and pretends to be thoughtful for a moment.

“La Strada, is that your final answer?”

“It is.” It is, despite being a Nino Rota piece, and because he can already envision himself settling into the role, becoming the character, and skating it for months.

David looks him in the eye, and his expression is one of glee. “Last chance, you’re certain?”

“Yes,” Lu Han says emphatically. 

“Alright!” David exclaims, and claps his hands together. “This is going to be so much fun, I have so many ideas, and you’ll get a kick out of coming up with the costume design, I’m sure.” David barely has to think before they get into it, immediately planning out the jumps, layout approved by Orser himself. The opening notes drift down from the loudspeakers and so Lu Han’s personal New Year begins.

“It’s _Olympic_ year,” Lori announces, like it’s a brand new fact that Lu Han hasn’t been informed of. “So we’ll do something that really brings out you.” She takes over in the short program department almost as soon as David is satisfied that he’s done his part for the free skate.

Lori takes Lu Han’s entire process, consolidates it, and amplifies his visceral reaction the pieces. When she says it’s Olympic season, she knows there’s a degree of the music that has to draw big scores from the judges, and impress them without alienating them. Her selections are more conservative than they have been in the past, more conventional, but no less lyrical.

“Leave your inhibitions here off the ice with your skate guards,” she tells him, and he doesn’t understand until her words are translated.

She doesn’t ask him to choreograph for himself, but she watches him skate back and forth along the ice for his reactions. There are at least two pieces that cause him to simply shake his head moments in, and she hits next without thinking twice about it. She takes notes from the sidelines, and when the fancy strikes him, he’ll throw in a jump or make some arm movements that bring a smile to her face, if nothing else.

They seem to come to the same separate conclusion on the forerunners, one featuring dramatic piano chords, and the other fierce violin playing. 

“You pick,” she says, “Which one do you like better?”

Lu Han thinks for a moment, shifting his balance from one foot to the other, small slides barely moving from the spot. Then he thinks that he’ll probably overthink the whole thing if he gives it too much thought, and blurts out, “The sadder one.”

Lori gives him an appraising look. “I never picked you out to be the melancholy angst type, but they’re both kind of sad? And neither one of them is really sad. Which one do you mean?”

“The violin piece,” he says, the name of the instrument a new word for him, and he’s glad to be able to use in context. “It’s lonely.”

“Hm, when you put it that way, it is the sadder piece of the two. But Rondo Capriccioso? That’s lively.”

Lu Han shrugs. “Lonely.”

And like that, he’s ready for the upcoming season, Olympic year and all, two new programs under his belt by the end of May, and a new exhibition piece to use during the skating shows in July from Jeffrey. 

Orser flits about between all his skaters, but it’s obvious he’s spending more time with anyone who has a shot at the Olympic games, and the club newsletters print tacky articles that promote the skating program. 

Lu Han’s engines are revving. 

 

They fly him out to China first, to fulfill all his obligations to his sponsors, and Lu Han tries not to cringe at the giant light up display board of him advertising Anta jackets with his face blown up that greets him immediately after landing.

He’s whisked through photoshoots and interviews, shuttled away to the next scheduled appointment before he’s had enough time to think about the question, much less provide a reasonable answer. And then he’s hopped on a plane to Fukuoka, and he thinks that it’s funny he could be in the same country as his parents and still not visit his mother.

Yixing would smack him.

Yixing does smack him, as soon as he walks into their shared hotel room, and pounces on Lu Han before he lets out a loud yelp.

Daniel (from Italy, Lu Han thinks, but he doesn’t remember his Family name) passes by at that moment, and looks at Yixing, clinging to Lu Han like a puppy, and blinks.

“Uh, do you need help?” He asks, backing away even as he says the words.

“Yes, please,” Lu Han says, at the same time Yixing says, “Absolutely not,” and shuts the door in Kevin’s face.

“That was rude of you. But I suppose this is a typical welcoming.”

“You’ve got it, roomie,” Yixing says, and returns to unpacking his underwear like the whole thing hadn’t happened.

Lu Han sets down his luggage case and sits down on the bed Yixing hadn’t claimed with no intention of settling down or taking out any of his stuff. It makes it easier to repack into his bags later.

“So, were you the only one who got an invite to Fantasy on Ice this year?” Lu Han goes for casual nonchalance, but Yixing is having none of it.

“No, if you’re wondering where your favourite roomie is, he said he was too busy for exhibitions and turned down the invitation. Also not going to The Ice, in case you were wondering, and let’s be real, you totally were.”

“And what about…” Lu Han trails off, remembering that Jongin wasn’t ‘in this business’ anymore, and it feels weird that they’ll be rehearsing without Jongin at the peak of the group choreography pyramids, where the cameras can catch him best. 

“I would be insulted that you didn’t even pretend to like me better, but then, I know what happened at the Four Continents after party last season, so I guess I’ll repress my hurt,” Yixing says, and sends him a fake teary eyed pout.

Lu Han launches a pillow in his direction, pleased that it hits Yixing even if he ducked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’re not even denying that you’ve replaced me as best friend. And you’re physically attacking me now. This is a serious downgrade of our relationship, I want out.”

“Nothing happened between us, okay? Just leave it.”

“Aha! So you do know what I’m talking about,” Yixing says with a smug grin on his face.

“No, I, goddamnit, I’m, we’re not having this conversation. Ever. I’m going to ignore you now.” 

“Fine, see if you have anyone to sit beside at dinner,” Yixing harrumphs and flounces away.

Lu Han sighs and rubs circles against his temples. 

He knows exactly what Yixing is talking about, and he should be thankful that Yixing has kept it quiet for this long, but his fingers itch to dial Minseok’s number. He restrains himself at the last moment and calls Jongin instead. 

“Hello?” Jongin answers with a scratchy voice.

“Hey, it’s Lu Han.”

“Oh, hey, are you in Japan right now?” 

“Yeah, for a show,” Lu Han says, and attempts to divert the conversation away from skating for the moment. Unfortunately, the next thing that comes out of his mouth is, “The weather’s really nice here!” 

Jongin stifles a laugh and complains, “It’s ridiculously warm in Seoul, but we’ve had a freezing winter and spring. Summer’s brutally hot, winter’s unbearably cold, so we never get any reprieve.” 

“Uh, Canada, we had our last goodbye from winter in the beginning of May when we had one last snowfall to freeze any of the flora that might have tried to revive itself after winter.”

“Damn,” Jongin says after a beat. “That is absolutely brutal, you win hands down. Remind me never to visit you.”

“You’re forgetting that our summers are also relatively cool, so forgive me when I say I’d rather not become the melting popsicles you’re likely to become as soon as you step outside your nicely air-conditioned room.” 

“Point two, am I going to get in a single word today?” 

“I think I’ve used up my witty comebacks quota for the day, you can have the rest of the battles,” Lu Han says cheekily, and checks the clock on the bedside table for the time. 

“Well if you’re all burnt out, is Yixing with you?”

“Nah he ditched me for the food downstairs. Was there anything you needed from him?” Lu Han replies.

“Oh, nothing, never mind, Sehun had, just forget I said anything.”

“Okay,” Lu Han says, drawing out the ‘o’ and blinking.

“Call back soon, okay?” Jongin asks, and hurriedly hangs up, the dial tone reaching Lu Han’s ears without him having yet understood the situation.

He troops downstairs and sits beside Yixing, who makes a grand show of not listening to whatever Lu Han has to say, turning his chair so his hips face away from Lu Han and steadily working through his food with his nose upturned.

“I called Jongin, and he mentioned something about Sehun, so maybe you should call later?” Lu Han says, before helping himself to potato salad.

Yixing whips his head around, realizes he was supposed to ignore Lu Han, and clears his throat.

“Huh,” Lu Han says lightly, “I guess we should have a conversation about this.”

Yixing glares at him, but steals food from his plate, so things work out.

They don’t end up having the conversation until Tokyo, because the organizers of the show are slave drivers who have them up early in the morning for rehearsal and run-throughs straight, pausing only for meal breaks, and then it’s on with the show every evening.

There’s something funny about the fact that figure skating is so popular in Japan, and absolutely nowhere else, popular enough to draw all the non-European skaters out to the same shows on the same island peninsula, and still have sell-out crowds and unwavering support, regardless of a skater’s country of origin. They applaud juniors who can barely land a double axel, and cheer on post-retirement skaters who still spin circles around Lu Han despite their creaking bones and sore muscles.

But this is skating fun, and they do stupid things like have quad battles, and Lu Han lands all of them solidly, to the audience’s delight, and this is something he suspects Jongin would have enjoyed. He would have loved how responsive the audience was, cheering for everyone and providing enough energy to keep Lu Han going despite the exhaustion that’s set in by the third night. 

There are flashing cameras everywhere, and colourful spotlights. His ears still ring with the pumping bass of their last group number, and he thinks he could do the dance in his sleep after how hard it’s been drilled into his muscle memory. Lu Han goes to bed with aches and pains every night, even though he’d gotten so much practice in beforehand, bemoaning his lack of fitness to Yixing, who doesn’t even have enough energy to grunt a response or an acknowledgement.

“Don’t peak too early,” Orser warns him on the phone, from all the way back in Canada, and Lu Han says, “I understand,” before passing out on top of his blankets. 

During their final night in Tokyo, they set up a giant buffet of food and push all the tables together so the skaters can sit in a massive heap, acquaintances, rivals, and friends all sitting elbow to elbow, devouring through tray after tray of sandwiches and surprisingly delicious catered food. 

Lu Han is ninety percent sure that Krystal is already drunk when they break out the alcohol, so he clearly hasn’t been paying close enough attention to everyone else, but then there’s tipsy just legal teenagers stumbling around, and Lu Han feels kind of warm and happy himself. The staffs are turning a blind eye, and the managers are all probably getting wasted themselves after the month they’ve all gone through, so there’s no one to berate them for breaking any rules (although the ones about alcohol are all pretty much unwritten anyway).

“So anyway, and then I told him…” Amber Liu’s voice carries from down the table, and Lu Han spots her, leaning heavily against Krystal, whose serious expression would make her look sober if it weren’t for the red flush covering her cheeks and neck.

They might regret it in the morning, feeling out of sorts as they head off on planes to their respective training grounds and back into the regular routines, but for now, this is their relaxation, one of their few chances to let loose around each other, before they become guarded and all about work ethic again. Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile the dedication and athleticism with the easy-going sides of people, but it’s a separation that most of them have no trouble making, and it makes Lu Han think about Jongin’s words.

Daniel elbows Lu Han from the left and Lu Han frowns.

“Stop that, it hurts,” he whines.

“Yeah, well stop giggling,” Daniel says, which sends Yixing into peals of laughter again. 

“I feel like every time I’ve seen you this year you’ve been drunk,” Lu Han complains.

“I’m not even drunk. You’ve seen me drunk! This is maybe mildly tipsy.”

Daniel elbows him again. “This is so weird. Are you two flirting? I could have sworn you were with that other guy.”

“Daniel, you can’t just say things like that,” Yixing admonishes, “Lu Han hasn’t admitted his feelings yet. And for the record I’m taken.” 

Lu Han suddenly feels like he’s been splashed with cold water.

“If you say so,” Daniel slurs, shrugging and climbing up out of his seat. “I’m headed to bed. You should have come to do these shows last year, Lu Han, it’s been kind of fun having you around.” 

“Oh no,” Yixing says when Daniel leaves. “You’re frowning. Oh boy, this is going to be good, you’re going to yell at me for not keeping a secret now aren’t you.”

Lu Han’s voice is like ice. “Well, would I be wrong if I did?” 

“Yeah, because I’ve said absolutely nothing. I’m your best friend! Or was,” Yixing says and frowns, “I wouldn’t do that to you, not when the skating world is all incestuous and gossip gets around faster than you can do a lap in a rink.”

“So how are you going to explain what just happened?” Lu Han seethes, jabbing his thumb in the direction of Daniel’s retreating back. “Forget it, you’re too drunk for this conversation. I’m going to wait until you are completely sober for the choice words I have for you.”

“Lu Han,” Yixing says, grabbing his arm without any wobble. Lu Han shakes him off and makes his way toward the elevator upstairs to their room. His brain isn’t functioning right now, and he can’t decide if it’s because he’s slightly inebriated or if his misplaced anger has silenced it for him. 

Yixing runs after him in a straighter line than Lu Han would have expected, but Lu Han closes the elevator doors in his face and swipes himself through the lock, fully prepared to hide under the covers and pretend to be asleep, or maybe actually sleep, so the entire night can disappear from his memory.

“What a shitty way to end this relatively good thing,” he spits into his pillow, keeping tears at bay.

The card reader whirrs and Yixing lets himself in, pinning Lu Han against his bed.

“Okay, so you can wait over whatever it was you wanted to say to me, but I can’t wait right now so I’m going to tell you that I did not tell a single person what happened at Four Continents. I swear to God.”

“Whatever Xing, I am not listening to this right now.”

“Oh but you are, and you will because I am not going to take the fall for other people having eyes,” Yixing says, and does he sound angry? He has no right to feel anything but guilt right now.

“Get OFF me, Yixing, I’ll throw you right off this bed, don’t think I won’t.” 

Yixing pinches the back of his hand poking out from the blankets and presses his fingernails together, hard. “Lu Han,” he says over the sound of Lu Han’s cry, “Okay let’s have the conversation you wanted to have. You want to know why I’m always visiting Jongin and Sehun’s despite the fact that we don’t skate together anymore? It’s because we’re dating. Fuck, I don’t mean all three of us, I mean I’m seeing Sehun. Jongin leaves us together so we can fuck, and Sehun and I have way more fun together than even you and I did back when we were in elementary school.” Lu Han stills on the bed.

“I never said a word. You asked me if I saw and I said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’ because I know it’s important to you. There are only two people in this world who know that you drunk kissed Kim Minseok at Four Continents Championships and neither of them are even Minseok because you don’t have the guts to tell him and I’m a great friend. Whatever Daniel was insinuating had nothing to do with that night and everything to do with the fact that you two have spent literally every waking second in the public eye together, and the rumour mill flies high and fast where we come from.

“So you’re going to keep your secret. And man I’m rambling again, why do I have so much to say when I’m drunk? So we’ve established a few things right? I’ve just told you that I’ve been secretly dating the kid you treated like a little brother, and that you’re extremely obvious about your crush, and now you can decide which thing to be mad at me about but it better not be the latter because I will end you.”

“Shit,” Lu Han swears. “This is all a pile of absolute shit and I hate you, Zhang Yixing. Does he know?” 

“Maybe you should ask him,” Yixing says, and carefully dodges the punch Lu Han blindly throws at him.

 

 

Lu Han comes up with several dozen things to say before he falls asleep but forgets every single one in the morning, too tired to even recognize his own toothbrush, and emotionally drained enough not to want to have a conversation anyway. 

Yixing eyes him warily but doesn’t say anything either, and it feels too much like leaving with bad blood between them, which is the last thing Lu Han wants. It’s not necessarily a new feeling.

Yixing is someone important. Not in the, “I’m out to change the world, and watch me leave my mark on it,” kind of way, but he has his own silent determination and sense of purpose. Lu Han, who has never felt that strongly about anything, or a dream bigger and better than the ones he has at night, feels like he’s anchoring Yixing to a reality that Yixing is so desperate to escape. They’re friends, good friends, and they can hang out and do things together easily, but sometimes, Yixing says something to him, and Lu Han is reminded of how different they are. Yixing doesn’t say, “Lu Han, don’t you ever think you’re wasting yourself? Don’t you want to do something?” But that’s exactly what some of the stuff that comes out of his mouth sounds like, and Lu Han feels small just by standing next to him. He can’t help but compare himself. 

And Yixing accepts who he is and how he feels and he acted on it without Lu Han ever knowing, much less interfering. Lu Han has absolutely no idea how he’s supposed to move forward with his feelings out in the open, drawn out from the more repressed areas of his consciousness, and forced to the front of his thoughts at nearly any moment.

He spends the plane ride back to Canada on his laptop, senselessly playing card games and finally taking the time to learn the rules and gameplay for hearts.

For as many years as he was computer literate, Lu Han believed that the objective of the game was to have the highest card and win every hand. He’s in utter disbelief when he finds out that the point is the exact opposite, that you win by having the fewest number of points at the end, when someone has broken one hundred. Avoid the queen of spades, don’t take any hearts, breaking isn’t allowed on the first draw. 

Armed with this new information, and desperate for something to keep his mind away from dangerous thoughts and traitorous feelings, he plays round after round of the game until he falls asleep, head crashing against the screen in front of him, the edges imprinting harsh red lines across his face.

He wakes up and the pop up window informs him that he’s ‘Shot the Moon’.

The rulebook tells him that it’s a rare enough occurrence, when you really do win every single hand, and give all your opponents the resulting points, keeping yourself at zero. It happens by accident to him, and he can’t remember how he’s got here, to the little hearts exploding on his screen, telling him he’s won the game. It’s highly improbable that he could do this so half-heartedly and only semi-consciously, and there’s probably a lesson in here somewhere that Lu Han doesn’t learn. 

He writes down all the things he’s feeling, but the paper gets covered in meaningless words until his Chinese characters become undecipherable and he wonders why he’s so agitated. He’s lying to himself. Lu Han knows exactly he feels like shit and it’s because he’s not being honest with himself. 

It’s easier to skate out the tension, and Lori remarks that his ‘capriccioso’ has gotten more ‘dolente’ recently, but she doesn’t seem put out by it. On the contrary, the extra effort that he keeps throwing into training is construed as working hard for the testing at the High Performance Camp coming up for skaters in Beijing. 

“It’ll be your first and last time to really show anyone your programs, so the trainers can give you some feedback. They’re inviting all the skaters whose countries aren’t doing a camp this year, so there might be more people than usual, but you’ll get your allocated time,” Orser assures him.

Of course this means that Team Korea is joining them. Just his luck, he thinks. 

 

 

The silver lining, Lu Han supposes, is that Minseok is completely unaware that Lu Han may or may not have admitted several things to himself over the summer, and that nothing has to change between them, theoretically, if Lu Han can just keep his feelings in check. 

It’s difficult to be normal, and act like nothing’s changed, because now he’s noticing things he’s always done and finding new meaning in his actions and words.

His taxi and the Team Korea bus arrive in the parking lot to the skating facility at the same time, and they spot each other across the pavement and Yixing, standing beside Minseok, waves. Lu Han doesn’t have time to wonder why Yixing is on the Korean bus before he’s running forward and Minseok is jogging towards him. Their hug is forceful, and Lu Han still feels delighted. Lu Han thinks, ‘ _Reuniting like a married couple,_ ’ because no matter how long they’re separated for, or how they meet up again, the first thing on the agenda is always a bone-crushing hug. 

Minseok stays by Lu Han’s side while the others unload their bags, and rests an elbow on Lu Han’s shoulder, despite it being way higher than a comfortable armrest.

“Do you remember being that young?” He asks wistfully, as fifteen and sixteen year old girls just old enough for the senior circuits step off bus, eyes wide and curious. 

“What old man, I can’t hear you, I think my hearing aids are failing,” Lu Han says, bending over and clutching one hand to his back, the other do an ear.

“We’ve got to get you a shinier cane that matches your costume for your program,” Minseok says, resting a hand on Lu Han’s hip and patting it comfortingly. 

“I’m surprised you can even finish your programs, you’ve got to teach me all your tricks for keeping up your stamina,” Lu Han says with a leer and an exaggerated wink.

‘ _Flirting. If this were happening between anybody else, I’d call this flirting._ ’ He doesn’t flinch when their fingers brush against each other as they walk to the conference room but he strategically retreats his hand and thinks keeping his feelings incognito is going to be absolutely impossible. 

He slings an arm over Minseok’s shoulder as they take a seat near the back.

The words ‘welcome, skaters!’ are written in half a dozen languages on the board, and a woman in crisp grey suit stands at the front, in conversation with a bunch of officials, their dangly lanyards and security passes hanging from their necks. All of their faces are serious.

“From their expressions you’d think we haven’t all heard these types of talks enough tmes to give them ourselves,” Minseok whispers into his ear.

Lu Han laughs too loudly, and one of the officials glares at him. ‘ _Fuck. I am so very fucked,_ ’ he thinks.

He’s playing charades with himself by this point, the prompts are all long the lines of how close can you get to the fire before it gets too hot to handle. It doesn’t matter whether or not he’s confronted himself about the fact that he’s in love with his best friend because he knows how royally he can fuck things up. It’s okay, he says to himself in what he hopes is his most honest voice, if he gets a few fingers burned, or even an entire arm. The important thing is he can’t burn down the kitchen, can’t let whatever feelings he has ruin the friendship that he clings to now, the good thing in his life that he can’t let go of.

Half an hour later, he turns his head to sneak a glance at Minseok, who’s long fallen asleep already to the monotone cadence of the women’s voice. The schedules, plans, and general protocols take three times as long as necessary to recite because of all the translation that has to happen, and it’s made worse by the fact that Lu Han actually understands all that’s being said in Mandarin, Korean, and English, so the repetition is really grating on him. But he’s not sleepy, and he’s acutely aware of Minseok’s sleeping form on his shoulders. 

The voices of the officials fade away a little bit, and his attention focuses on the picture before him, a serene expression across Minseok’s lips, and Lu Han keeps his eyes turned, lingering over dark eyelashes and the slant of his nose. He smiles because he can’t help it. He wants to memorize Minseok’s face like this, Minseok’s face in any and every expression, and skate it to the audience, because this is perfect, he thinks, everyone has got to see this, at the exact same time he thinks this is too personal to ever be shared. 

“Is the meeting over?” Minseok asks groggily and Lu Han looks up to see everyone slowly dispersing. “Did I honestly just fall asleep? I was joking, but I really am too old for this. You should have elbowed me to keep me awake.” 

“Nah,” Lu Han says fondly, “You get this sleeping beauty look to you when you’re asleep you know.”

“And what, you couldn’t find me true love’s kiss?” Minseok teases. 

So maybe the kitchen is already on fire. 

 

 

The various Chinese judges they’ve brought along to provide input on their skating are paid to be smug and haughty, and probably given explicit instructions to hate everything and every skater. Lu Han knows this, he experiences it every year, but it still gives him a confidence hit. He can tell there’s at least one judge who is impressed by the programs, but the rest have nothing but snarky comments.

“How much time have you spent on these programs? They look recently put together,” one woman says, even though they know, all of them know he’s been working with these for months, and they feel like his children. 

“You clearly need to work harder on this,” a stern faced elderly man tells him while he’s leaning against the boards, drenched in sweat and still trying to catch his breath. Like sharks, they’re swarming around him, and he’s too tired to even defend himself. 

There is a ways to go, Lu Han recognizes that, more polishing, and definitely more practice on the technical elements, but it felt like the programs were coming together. The constant refrain of “you’re not good enough” might be a motivational tactic, but it’s an echo in his ears of his father from early childhood. 

If he squints he can even see his father’s face, and then their voices become his father’s voice, “You could have gone to Tsinghua or Beida,” he’s saying and the head coach is saying something now, “You could have won World’s,” he’s implying even if those aren’t his exact words. The disappointment from March floods him, and he really thought he had put this behind him, but these people here are ones who won’t let him forget.

Bile rises in his throat and he just nods, doesn’t clench his hands or grit his teeth, accepts the criticisms and hurries off the ice so the next skater can be flayed in turn. 

He takes the camcorder with him, so he can review the clips and find the places where they had complained about his edgework and tries to find the holes in the performance that they had managed to stick their fingers through and unravel the entire skate with. 

He’s still sitting, perched with his feet underneath him on the chair, chin resting against his forearms and watching the videos when Minseok finds him. 

Minseok grabs his arm and pulls it out before sitting down so he can see the screen. Minseok, who’s been through the process and knows what it’s like, doesn’t tell him to ignore what the invigilators said, simply points out moments in the program that he thinks work.

“Your spins are faster,” he says offhandedly, and wolf whistles at the landed quads. 

“Damn, spread eagles into triple axels, you’ve really upped your game this season, haven’t you?” 

He knows he’s being consoled and comforted, but he lets Minseok say nice things about the choreography and lets the compliments appease his wounded ego. After both programs play and the screen returns to his short, Minseok takes the camcorder out of Lu Han’s hands and pushes the off button. He snaps the screen closed and shoves it out of sight. 

“Are you ever amused that they rarely outright criticize the choreography? As if they know they’ve been paying thousands of dollars for world class choreographers and even if your program absolutely sucks, they have to pretend to like it?” Minseok asks, after a few moments, voice quiet.

“They’re always hypocritical like that,” Lu Han mutters, because he’s the cynic and he’s thought much the same.

“We’re in such a messed up sport. But I bet all the athletes say that.” 

Lu Han laughs and is inclined to agree.

“For what it’s worth, I think your programs are great.”

“Thanks, but I’m pretty sure they’re also supposed to be classified or whatever. I’m not sure you were supposed to see it until it was a finished product,” Lu Han says, but he doesn’t really care if Minseok sees it and Minseok knows it.

“Do you ever think it becomes a finished product? Like, do you ever skate your programs for a final time and think yeah that’s it, perfect, moving on?”

“No, of course not, that’s ridiculous.”

“See, I think the skate you have of any program is completely situational and contextual. It’s a conversation, between you and the audience, judges, whoever. Anyway, the point of all this is so you can take the notes you get and hand them off to your coach, and your coach smugly tells you, ‘ha! this is exactly what I’ve been saying to you, will you listen to me now?’” 

“You know, I’ve never thought about it like that, but you’re right,” Lu Han says, thoughtful.

“Does the great Brian Orser do that too? I’m just speaking from experience with Heechul,” Minseok says.

“Oh yes,” Lu Han says, pursing his lips, “I definitely remember.” 

Minseok laughs. “Alright let’s go,” he says and pulls Lu Han from his feet and drags Lu Han toward the cafeteria. 

Lu Han breathes a little easier after that, kicking himself for being so emotionally affected by such a little thing. There are at least three things he wants to say to Minseok, the most pressing one being, “Thank you for kicking my ass off the ground,” and he busies himself with how to go about saying it. Courage plucked up, he turns and notices that Minseok isn’t beside him. He stops walking abruptly and turns his head to look around. 

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but what’s wrong?” Minseok asks, eyes bright but tone cautious from behind him, like he’s seeing Lu Han for the first time. 

“I just got ripped to shreds by a bunch of old assholes who don’t even skate, what do you think?” Lu Han says, and doubles back to stand beside him again. 

“That’s not it, you’ve been out of it and weird this entire camp, are you going to tell what happened or not?” Minseok pushes, and they start walking again, but slower and less deliberate. 

“Nothing’s –”

“You don’t have to tell me, I already said that, but don’t say nothing’s wrong and insult my intelligence, Lu Han, we’re better friends than that,” he says and stops, pulling on Lu Han’s arm to turn him so they’re facing each other. 

Lu Han receives a cool stare and he fidgets.

“Sorry,” he concedes. “You’re right, there’s something, but I don’t want to talk about it.” 

And fuck it, forget salvaging the kitchen, it looks like the entire neighbourhood is about to be turned into ashes. The smoke alarms have to be ringing by now.

 

 

“We’re making dumplings. Jiaozi, mandu, gyoza, the whole nine yards. And you’re on kneading duty because I have no idea how to make dumpling wrappers and it was easier to assign you to the job,” Yixing says airily. Somehow the skaters have managed to stage a mass coup of the kitchen and it’s weird seeing all of them in hairnets and aprons. 

“We’re cooking? Do any of you even know how to cook?” Lu Han asks in shock, taking in the sight of a dozen heads each stationed at various positions around the kitchen. 

“Hey, I didn’t ruin those hot cakes okay, that was one hundred percent Sehun’s fault and you know it,” Yixing says, before poking him in the direction of the aprons.

“Go. You too Minseok, you can keep him out of trouble,” Yixing says before rushing towards the sound of something being fried. “I hope you know how to work the frier!” He’s singing in mangled English, “But honestly we don’t have any of the gyoza ready yet, stop it!” 

“Just so you know,” Lu Han says, pulling a cap over his head, “I have not once made dumplings from scratch. I think I watched my grandmother make them once but she always kicked me out of the kitchen so I actually have no idea.”

“Well it’s a lucky thing that I know how to cook, isn’t it?” Minseok says, and instructs him to collect flour. 

When he returns, Minseok has rummaged through their supplies to find rolling pins and has a pot of water boiling on the stove. 

“We’ll make all of it the same way, mandu, jiaozi, gyoza, it’s all the same dough. I think,” Minseok adds and Lu Han watches as Minseok pours steaming hot water to moisten the flour.

His forearms are covered in a light dusting of flour, muscular and smooth. His face is pinched in concentration as he carefully and evenly stirs and pours, one at a time. Lu Han swallows and forces the attraction back down. 

“I’m going to go and like, start a game of pick up basketball or something, I am clearly unneeded in this kitchen,” Lu Han says, voice thick with so much _want_ he’s surprised that Minseok doesn’t notice.

Minseok hits him lightly with a rolling pin without turning away from what he’s doing.

“Fine then, you can be helpful by kneading the dough, I am pretty sure this is something that even you can’t mess up, please do not take that as a challenge to prove me wrong.”

Lu Han pouts and leans over the bowl of dough.

“Isn’t this hot? Didn't you just pour boiling water into it?”

Minseok rolls his eyes and wipes his hands off with a towel.

“It’s not going to burn you, Lu Han,” he says with some exasperation.

“That's what you think,” Lu Han mutters, and reaches in to squeeze the dough. It feels kind of weird, a little bit elastic, and he squishes at it with his fingers.

“No, no, like this,” Minseok says and steps behind him. He reaches his hands around Lu Han, trapping him in a back hug and takes the dough into his own hands, forcefully pressing down with the heel of his palms.

Lu Han’s breath hitches. He can feel Minseok’s breath against his cheek, and every line of his chest pressed against Lu Han’s back. He feels lightheaded and squirms, trying to get out of Minseok’s grasp. 

“There,” Minseok says, maybe a minute or two later, and shoots Lu Han a strange look.

Lu Han is abashed. “Uh, so what now?”

“We’ll let it soften, I’ll go find a plastic bag for it, and then we have to separate it out and make actual wrappers, you know, the round things? That’s what the rolling pins are for.”

It turns out that Lu Han is an unmitigated disaster when it comes to creating regularly shaped circles, and in the end Minseok takes over that side of the job too, so Lu Han becomes the errand boy, shuttling wrappers to the teams wrapping three different types of dumplings, neatly depositing globs of filling and shaping the ingredients into actual meal items. 

“My grandmother would have absolutely hated this,” Yixing says around a bite of gyoza. He wheedled the first ones out of whoever was managing the frying pan.

“That bad?” Lu Han asks.

“Oh no, this is delicious, and I’m not sharing so you can definitely go fight the others for your own,” Yixing says, and pauses to eat another one, chewing happily. 

“It’s the atmosphere, we’ve got like an assembly line going or something, each workhorse, I mean chef, I obviously meant cook and not any type of animal, positioned at a station. Like handing water from pail to pail down a line to put out a fire or something. We used to do dumpling nights but the ingredients would all be ready, and you’d have half a dozen of us sitting around a table, gossiping while dumplings were wrapped efficiently. It was the place for secret heated conversation you know, a communal thing.”

It’s the first time they’ve sat beside each other and had time to talk since Tokyo, Lu Han realizes, and he now suspects that Yixing’s been talking about dumplings to distract him. 

“So uh, you know that thing we were talking about that time,” Lu Han says.

“Oh please, do be more vague,” Yixing says sarcastically.

“I kind of wish you’d told me earlier, you know, it feels weird thinking that you thought you couldn’t tell me who you were dating, and stuff.” 

“God, this entire community is so incestuous, I wouldn’t have even told you if I could have helped it to be honest. But I’m glad at least that you’re not yelling at me for besmirching Sehun’s innocence or something.” 

“Have you besmirched Sehun’s innocence?” Lu Han asks, with a pointed raise of an eyebrow.

“For the record,” Yixing says, wiping grease from the corners of his mouth with a napkin and setting aside his plate, “Sehun had absolutely no purity for me to mar in the first place.” 

Lu Han chokes, and is very glad he is not currently eating any of the dumplings. “Um.” 

“I’m also not going to hurt him but if he ever does go crying to you, you can stab me in the neck with your toe pick, I get it.” 

“Wait, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be giving Sehun the shovel talk, not you.”

Yixing rolls his eyes. “Please, I can take care of myself. Also, your wingman position was given up the moment you and Minseok laid eyes on each other, let’s face it.”

Lu Han shushes him by bringing his hand to cover Yixing’s mouth, and he can feel Yixing smirking at him, the asshole.

“I’m guessing no progress then?” Yixing has the gall to ask, as soon as Lu Han moves his hands away.

“I’m going to sew your mouth shut.”

“I’m pretty certain, after your display of ineptitude in the kitchen today, that I will not have to worry about you demonstrating remarkable skill with a needle and thread any time soon.” 

“Don’t stereotype,” Lu Han admonishes. “I cook for myself in Canada.”

“I’m sure,” Yixing says, “But your definition of cooking is also limited to stir frying vegetables and maybe spare ribs.” 

Lu Han has an angry retort to that about cooking for himself ever since he was, ever since he _moved_ out of his parents’ place, but Minseok brings him a plate of mandu and he gives up talking in favour of eating.

Yixing tries to steal one, and Lu Han jabs him with his chopsticks.

“Go fight the others for your own,” Lu Han says pleasantly and Yixing sticks his tongue out at him.

Minseok reaches over for one and Lu Han practically coos, feeding him with his own chopsticks. 

“I see how it is,” Yixing says, “You’ve given your love away to someone else.” 

Minseok laughs, and Lu Han’s heart skips a beat.

Before they leave, Yixing pulls both Minseok and Lu Han to him in a mock teary-eyed hug.

“I don’t know how I’ll live until then, but we’ll be together for Cup of China in November. We’ll make it there.”

“Asshole,” Lu Han says, and cuffs him on the shoulder.

“Yeah, I have to see your face pretty much every single day in practice, I don’t know how I’ll manage to survive through that one,” Minseok says.

Yixing sends him a wounded look. “You’ve hurt me. I feel my heart shattering even now.”

“But you’re up first right, Skate America? Knock ‘em dead.” 

“Yeah, burn the house down,” Yixing adds.

“I’ll do my best,” Minseok says, and salutes Lu Han before clasping him on the back in a one-armed hug. 

 

Minseok doesn’t even come close.

Lu Han finds out heading out of practice to go home for the weekend in the middle of October. Toronto’s summer has decided to extend itself, and Lu Han isn’t complaining that it’s still warm enough to walk around in hoodies and jeans without a jacket yet. By the time November hits, he’ll probably be trudging through three feet of snow, so he’ll take what he can get in the meantime.

He browses on his phone while waiting at the bus stop, and almost drops it when he reads the words ‘Kim withdraws from Skate America’. His thumb taps the article and he gets so involved in reading it he almost misses the fact that a bus pulls him and stops to let him get on.

When he gets home he rereads the article and wants to throttle something. He settles for throwing a pillow across the room, and rushes to call everyone he knows in Korea, none of whom pick up. He had hoped it was just a rumour when he first saw the headline, but it’s not just a tabloid that’s picked up the story and it’s reported in a litter of sources, reliable news sites among them. 

“You jerk,” he screams at the screen, “There go your chances to be at the final you dumbass, what on earth were you thinking?” 

He watches the competition on TV, willing himself to see a familiar name and face, but the entire men’s event is broadcast and Minseok isn’t there. 

It’s a shitshow anyway, an absolute splat fast except for that one Yamashita guy from Japan, who cleans up gold nicely away from the other skaters, who are all skating like they don’t want to be on the podium.

Lu Han sits and swears for the length of it, yelling at skaters he’s never met, and brooding when the ladies skate lights out, every single one of them. 

“Damn you,” he says to his phone, “You’ve placed a curse on all of them and the grand prix series has only just started. I am not looking forward to this season at all.” Minseok still hasn’t called him back, and he’s not holding his breath.

During practice, Orser asks him what’s gotten him so fired up, and he lies through his teeth by saying, “The competition is very soon.” The answer makes sense and Orser buys it, or doesn’t push the matter because no one can complain that Lu Han is actually giving his all into the run-throughs, instead of skimping off and saving energy. 

“It’s going to be great,” David tells him while he takes a drink from his water bottle. “You and the program are really meshing together with good timing, you’ll take China by storm.” 

Lu Han doesn’t say something unnecessary, like the fact that he doesn’t need to take China by storm because his face already projects off a bunch of commercials there, he knows, he’s been and he’s filmed them. He wants Minseok to take the world by storm so they can conquer it together. 

“You’ve got this thing, a complex,” Yixing tells him. (“This is the first time you’ve called me from Toronto, ever, I mean _ever_ , Lu Han, and not even a hello? I am really nothing to you.” Yixing replies after picking up the phone to hear Lu Han demanding, “What the hell happened to Minseok?”)

“It’s like, you’ve seen Minseok, you know he’s good, so you want to show the world that. But like there’s this lack of divide between figure skating and non-figure skating to you, everything’s all kind of a one-track life.”

“Shut up,” Lu Han had said, “Are you going to answer my question or not?”

“I’m not the messenger, I’m not telling you jackshit, you and Minseok can sort out your problems yourselves, you’re definitely old enough,” Yixing says snidely, and Lu Han hangs up on him without another word.

The anger simmers to irritation and it settles underneath his skin like a suit, wrapping up his entire body in a cocoon until the feeling decidedly resolves into one of longing and desire. He’s never had a temper, not like this. 

His disappointment doesn’t transfer over to anyone else, and he tries not to dampen the moods of the other skaters in the club who also have their own grand prix assignments to deal with. 

A week later, Kris comes back from St. John (“New Brunswick,” Kris mutters, “it wasn’t even St. John _’s_ in Newfoundland and Labrador. Why is every city in this country named after the same three people? Why is there a King Street in every city?”) looking like a soldier just off the battlefield. He’s happy to be back, and he smiles when people congratulate him, teeth and gums exposed as the other skaters clap him on the back. 

“Seventh’s not too bad, but I kind of wanted better,” Kris confides to Lu Han when they’re eating lunch, a gigantic sandwich for Kris and rice with leftovers for Lu Han. Lu Han stabs at his food and brings it to his mouth only after it’s been completely mangled, but Kris is too busy telling his story to notice. “I guess the result’s decent enough, it gives me something to work towards for next time, you know? Could have gone better, could have gone worse.” He takes a bite and gets sauce on his face, Lu Han doesn’t process the visual and doesn’t tell him to wipe his mouth.

“Besides, Coach thinks it’s pretty decent placement. Good experience too, come to think of it, I mean, that crowd was amazing, anytime the word Canada was announced, they just went for it. Screaming, air horns, everything. It was terrifying.” He grins. “It was great,” he decides, and shoves the rest of his meal down his throat with surprising speed. Lu Han is surprised he doesn’t choke.

Kris continues telling his story as he waits for Lu Han to finish his lunch, and loses Lu Han sometime in the middle of his ramblings, because Kris tends to supplement English into the conversation whenever there are words he doesn’t know in Chinese. But Lu Han can feed off of Kris’s excitement and energy, and it’s probably good motivation for him, because he knows he’s up next in the checklist of things, so to speak. Kris is a fun guy, he’s funny, and kind of ridiculous, and fills up the space whenever Lu Han draws into himself so it doesn’t seem so empty.

He tries to smile encouragingly when Kris needs it, and promises him that they can go over Lu Han’s pre-competition routine to calm jittery nerves before Kris’s next competition, which seems to please him. 

“You’re a good guy, Han,” Kris tells him. “A good friend to have.”

Lu Han supposes that’s what they are now after the amount of time they’ve spent together in the club training. 

Somehow, he still feels like he’s settling.

 

 

He gets the chance to release his frustration right at the beginning of November. Cup of China is the first weekend in, and in Beijing. He knows he won’t have time to visit his parents again, and he doesn’t dwell on it. Yixing would definitely smack him, and he’s here too, along with Minseok, but Lu Han doesn’t spot them once. 

It makes sense in the beginning, they don’t land at the same time, but they’re in the same hotel, Lu Han knows because he spots Huang Zitao, the third Chinese representative, down his hallway when he checks in. So they all have to be there, but Yixing and Minseok are either hiding from him, making it look like there were simply a lot of coincidences and conflicts in scheduling, or they’re all genuinely too busy doing their own thing to run into each other.

In a purely theoretical universe, not seeing each other can be attributed to their mismatching timetables, but Lu Han knows that at any other competition they would have forcefully made time so they could hang out together, and it makes the distance all the less manageable. He doesn’t know what rooms they’re in, can’t spot them at mealtimes, and he thinks he’ll get a break when it comes down to ice time but somehow, they even manage to avoid each other during the practice.

All the practice ice times are scheduled officially so that fans can pay money for tickets to watch, none of them get more time to get used to the rink than another, and all the men are lumped together, sharing the ice. Most of the time they narrowly avoid slicing each other’s ears off during death drops and flying spins, try not to triple lutz into someone else and accidentally cut off that person’s foot, but somehow Yixing and Minseok manage to keep their distance, not getting close even once. They’re on opposite sides of the rink and Lu Han does his best to ignore everything around him for all his run-throughs, doesn’t process the clapping or his coach clapping him on the back.

It feels like they’re in the cold war for the entire time, and Lu Han allows himself to be distracted by it. He knows he’s coming off as horrible when Zitao squeaks and runs away from him when they end up in the same elevator. 

Orser frowns at him before the short and throws ridiculous joke after ridiculous joke at him in an attempt to get him to lighten up and smile. 

“I really did not want you to have all this negative energy before this skate, but who knows, things might work,” he says, throwing his arms up in defeat.

It’s like a dark cloud has settled around him, and it’s just there and refuses to go away. He’s dealing with things, this is his way of coping, pushing himself to the point of exhaustion on the ice, and ignoring the issue at hand.

He goes into the short program and comes out in first place.

In the audience, there are people waving Chinese flags and holding handmade banners depicting his skating or simply ‘add oil!’ and his name. But the number of empty seats far outnumbers the filled ones, which is not altogether unsurprising.

Figure skating isn’t a big sport in China, not even when it has a few star athletes to boast about. 

“Maybe all successful skaters from China have to have ‘Lu’ in their names,” Yixing had joked once.

“Chen Lu and I don’t share a single character in our name, please shut up,” Lu Han had groaned. “Also, Song/Zhou pair doesn’t have anything remotely sounding like ‘Lu’ in their names, and if you really wanted someone in China to name a figure skater, they’re more likely to say Song Qian or Zhou Mi anyway.” 

“Hm. Maybe it only applies to singles skaters,” Yixing had replied.

The thought doesn’t clear away the cloud that carries him through the entire performance.

It’s dark and brooding, and a more showy interpretation of the music than he had ever shown either Lori or his coach. There’s anguish, and energy, buzzing through him all the way down to the tips of his fingers, stretched in arching lines as he covers the rink.

The darkness clings to his throat, has him gasping for breath before he gets to even his first jump and it makes him, physically forces him to hold onto the landing of his opening quad toeloop, knees bending to an acute angle so he doesn’t fall over. The crowd cheers, and it’s not loud enough to drown out the screaming in Lu Han’s head. 

He spins fast enough to become dizzy, and then loses his momentum and stumbles coming out of a combination spin, but his step sequence is electric, sharp changes in direction, arms moving throughout a rocker, a counter, and a twizzle, and he hopes that his body remembers this moment because he’s never had so much alacrity for a step sequence in his life.

The air in the arena whiplashes against his triple axel, and he lands it with assuredness, the storm inside him building and growing and forcing himself into the triple toe at the end of this triple lutz despite the fact that he goes into it with absolutely no speed. 

He fights, and fights, fighting against himself, against his skating, against the rumbling thunder in his head, and then it’s over, and he doesn’t know what happened to any of the other skaters at all, but there’s a number one after his name when his own scores come up and Orser hugs him happily. 

“You did it,” he says with a hand on Lu Han’s back. “Whatever you did, all that energy, it worked!” he tells him, and Lu Han wants to punch himself in the face while the crowd around them cheers. His coach smiles at him and Lu Han forces himself to show some teeth, standing up to give the crowd a bow before making a hasty retreat.

He side steps past all the waiting reporters and their cameras and steels himself in the locker rooms, trying to contain all the rage that’s boiled over, unable to catch his breath or contain his emotions. It doesn’t make sense that he’s this unhappy from winning the short, but the only feeling he has right now is wrath, singing through his veins, and his body and brain are both furious with himself. How the hell is he supposed to deal with everyone at the press conference?

“Where did you get that emotional energy?” he can hear them asking, and his coach didn’t know it when he said it, but the thing he did to make it work was to get violently pissed at his best friend. The conversation he was having with this program, it was a monologue, a one sided screaming match. There’s no maturity or artistry in that, no dialogue, and the judges are fools if they can’t see that. 

“Good job,” he hears echoing around the room, that voice painfully stabbing straight through his gut, and he turns around so fast he nearly trips over his skates. 

“You fucking asshole,” Lu Han says. He’s pretty sure he refrained from making a fist to punch him but Minseok still takes a step back.

“Fuck, Lu Han, are you _still_ mad about the whole boot thing?”

“Yes I’m fucking mad, you haven’t –”

“Look, I’ve been having problem with my boots all summer, you didn’t know but it was giving me problems, and I had a choice to make. I could go to Detroit with shitty skates and do a piss poor job, or I could withdraw, and cut my losses. I’m not the type to spend eternity debating between your choices, but in the end it’s better to simply pick something and stick with it. I committed to pulling out, and that means I won’t be at the final but what’s happened, happened, okay?” 

“Is boot problems what we’re calling it now? Not ‘I’m a busy med school student who doesn’t have time for figure skating?’” Lu Han doesn’t mean to say it, but it comes out anyway. Lu Han is the type of person who would change his entire layout if one jump were giving him trouble, instead of trying to work through and make the plan happen. If Minseok had problems with his skating boots, he’d fix the issue, and he’d move on, if he decided he needed to withdraw from a competition, he’d do it. He was prepared to work hard and make sacrifices, while Lu Han was always trying to find a work around. 

“Is that what this is about? Do you honestly believe I didn’t give it my best shot or something? I’m sorry I came second to you okay, but I did try, I didn’t let you win or anything stupid like that!”

Lu Han feels punched in the stomach, he hadn’t known what Minseok’s placement was, hadn’t even been curious enough to ask or find out. 

“Are you calling me stupid?” Lu Han asks, and that’s the most childish thing he’s ever said to Minseok. It’s not a good comeback, and he doesn’t mean it even as he says it. 

“Why are you so mad?” Minseok asks, letting the question glance off him without even considering it.

“What on earth are you so mad about? You’ve scared away literally everyone in your camp, and the anger is honestly stifling all of us, including the skaters who never have to share the ice with you. It’s been going on since the summer, you’re always so on edge. Lu Han, just tell me what’s wrong.” 

“I don’t fucking know okay?!” Lu Han screams in frustration.

Minseok reaches out a hand tentatively, touches Lu Han’s shoulder, and then keeps his palm resting there when Lu Han doesn’t flinch away. 

“Okay, talk.” Minseok doesn’t dismiss him. Minseok doesn’t act like the fact that he doesn’t know what he’s so angry about diminishes Lu Han’s feelings and Lu Han is grateful but he wants to know why he’s so angry too.

When they first met, Minseok was distinctly annoyed by Lu Han’s detached nature, appalled that someone could be content to drift on. Slowly, however, he came to understand Lu Han not as being unmotivated, or lacking dedication, but simply approaching life in a simple and undemanding way. 

“You didn’t tell me anything, I had to find out from a reporter? And then you didn’t answer my calls, and no one was saying anything to me. And then you continued not to say anything to me, you and Yixing both, even though we were living in the same goddamn building, and skating maybe ten metres away from each other, it was just stonewall central, and I cannot believe you’d think for a moment that I didn’t think you skated well enough, I didn’t even see you skate I was so…”

“It was a pretty sudden decision, and then Yixing told me you were pissed as fuck so I gave you some space, I’m sorry I–”

“Goddamn,” Lu Han says breathily, because it comes to him at that moment. “God fucking damn.” 

Minseok withdraws his hand and looks wounded. 

Lu Han shakes his head and he closes his eyes. He had been angry for only one reason, and it’s the thought that there were things more important to Minseok than figure skating might ever be. That there might be people and things in his life that mattered more to him. And Lu Han takes that personally, as if Minseok wanting good things for himself is in direct opposition to wanting good things for Lu Han, who is unable to separate figure skating from his life.

You can cut a magnet in half again and again until it’s a tiny sliver but it will still have two sides – a north and a south. For Lu Han it’s impossible to sever him from figure skating, no matter how many pieces of him you cut away, there would still be figure skating with him, stuck now as part of his identity. And Minseok, Minseok wanting something more made it feel like Lu Han wasn’t enough. 

Lu Han wants Minseok to know only figure skating. Nothing but the feel of the ice. It’s the most selfish thing he’s ever wanted, and Lu Han has wanted a lot of things for himself.

He blinks and Minseok’s face is right there, eyes concerned, so genuinely worried, and Lu Han shudders. They’re so close and Lu Han wants so much. 

He leans forward and kisses him. 

He has one hand wrapped around Minseok’s right bicep and tugs him forward, Minseok’s lips soft underneath his and so _good_ before he pushes him away again aghast, mouth open and body suddenly filled with sheer terror. 

“Fuck,” he says, and meets Minseok’s eyes, Minseok, “Fuck,” Lu Han says again, “I’m sorry, fuck, this was a mistake, shit.” He bolts.

 

 

He dreams about the kiss, Minseok’s expression of confusion, sees it and replays it, and every time he wakes up breathless and chanting to himself fuckfuckfuck. The smell of smoke fills his nostrils, and his skin is heated, because he did it, he went and set fire to the goddamn kitchen and the pillars of the building are crashing down around him.

“Hey,” Orser says, snapping fingers in front of his eyes and Lu Han thinks, ‘ _Huh, I wonder how I got out of bed and out here._ ”

“No time to be distracted, just gotta put on a show exactly like you did yesterday and everything’s going to be okay. You can do this, Han,” he says and Lu Han thinks, ‘ _No, no I really cannot._ ’

He’s still thinking about the kiss when the opening notes of La Strada rain down on him, muscle memory leading him forwards and back, he doesn’t even notice he’s taken off for his quadruple salchow until he’s on the ice, landed badly on his hip, and he doesn’t even wince, doesn’t process the hard fall or the hit, doesn’t think about it as he gets up and pushes himself back down the ice to go for the quad toe. 

It’s an unmitigated disaster.

After the first fall, the rest of the jumps go down like a series of dominoes, crashing one after another, unavoidable. By the skin of his teeth he manages to land the second quad, but it’s meaningless in the grand scheme of things. He’s not thinking about the jumps, he doesn’t even want them, and every single one he lands is much less his skill than the repetitions he’s done to get his body familiar with the feeling. 

The next mistake he makes is by doubling a lutz, and that’s going to give him maybe two points instead of the expected six and a half. The math sends him through another round of self-hatred, he comes out of the triple loop and Minseok’s face flashes through his mind again, and he would have been fine but he reaches his hand out and puts it down to steady himself. He rises, but he still feels shaken on his feet. 

The triple toe in combination with the triple axel is under-rotated, the judges won’t even need a replay to get that, and a double footing on the landing to boot will take all the oomph that the combo was supposed to give him, and the icing on the cake is a an edge call on his triple flip, which is fair because Lu Han can’t remember if he tried for an inside or outside edge while he’s rotating the jump in the air. 

The falls are just the beginning of it, because all the energy he’s had for the past few days is suddenly just gone. It whooshes out of his body, and leaves an empty shell of a person behind. The life goes out of him, and his shoulders drop, hunched over, head down and not making any facial expressions. His eyes don’t look out at the judges or the audience a single time.

He stumbles in his combination spin and can’t get the jump on it; another downgrade maybe two a level one or even two spin. He finishes the upright spin and half-heartedly completes his finishing pose before already heading into his bows, ready to get the hell of the ice.

It tastes like giving up. It’s what it looks like too, the judges deduct marks, negative grades of execution in neat lines all the way down the protocol, and his program components score takes a dramatic hit from the level it reached the night before. 

Beside him, Orser is rubbing circles on his back and whispering into his ear, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

It seems more like he’s consoling himself than actually saying it to Lu Han, but he nods his head wordlessly and balls up the towel in his hand.

The media is going to flay him. 

He clings onto a podium finish, third place granted by the skin of his teeth because of the point cushion he had received from the short program. Yixing takes fourth but doesn’t look disappointed at his placement at all, just glares at Lu Han, face filled with disapproval and what looks a little like disgust. The longer Lu Han thinks about what all those lines and wrinkles on his forehead mean, the more he feels ashamed of himself. His eyes are filled with shadows and the tight line of his mouth reminds Lu Han of his mother and he has to turn away from the boards instead of talking to him.

Minseok takes gold. This is not unsurprising, for all Lu Han bemoaned Minseok’s studies taking first importance, he knows that Minseok is also not the kind of person to do anything second best. He works hard, and he gets results. Lu Han doesn’t look up to meet his eyes when he shakes his hand at the podium, releases the grip around his fingers as soon as they touch, and politely backs away to stare off in the distance, ignoring Minseok hissing his name out of the corner of his mouth throughout the playing of the national anthem. The media ask for the podium finishers to stand shoulder to shoulder for a picture, and Lu Han keeps three inches of space between them.

“Smile!” Someone calls out to them, and Lu Han can’t make any expression other than blank. 

The lights and flashing cameras in the press conference make him feel out of place, still dazed and unable to process his utter failure. Minseok rests his hand on his thigh underneath the table, hidden from the cameras and Lu Han automatically stiffens. It feels like the most natural thing in the world, just a small gesture of comfort, but he pushes the hand away like he’s pulling an IV drip right out of his arm and he’s a dying man.

 

 

Orser doesn’t let him read any of the articles about it afterward, forbids him from going online to see the reports. 

“You had one good night and one bad night, and we both know which one of those we’d like you to repeat again. Whatever it’ll take for us to get there, we’ll do it. Don’t lose faith after one competition.” 

He doesn’t get stuck in a rut like after worlds, but everything feels hopeless all the same. His jumps are just as consistent as they were before Cup of China, and nothing can explain his catastrophic choke. 

“It’s not performance pressure,” he insists to Orser for the sixth time, and Orser crosses his arms over his chest.

“Okay, let me tell you what I think. There are a lot things that happen around us, but at the end of the day we’re skaters. There aren’t a lot of things that we can do, but one of them is skate. You can always skate. So concentrate on what you can do now, get out there, and skate.” 

It’s not a profound piece of advice, and there aren’t any catchy mottos he can quote from it, but Lu Han takes the words to heart. He goes on the ice and tells himself, ‘ _skaters must skate_ ’. That’s what he does. He skates.

Lu Han skates.

Orser flies around with his other skaters at their grand prix assignments, and none of them come back with a medal, but they all feel happy. Lu Han has won something and he’s desperately unhappy. For their sakes, to be fair to their effort and hard work, Lu Han skates.

Lori comes back to go over the short program with him, talk about any kinks and work out if anything can be better for the next run.

“To be honest, I don’t remember the skating,” Lu Han confesses.

“Too in the zone to be anything but in the present. Well, it was a great skate, I don’t have anything to add, so if you don’t have any complaints, I’m pretty sure we’re good.” 

He runs through it once for her anyways, and she smiles at him.

“Haven’t recaptured that performance, but it’s good, I always thought it would be. Have you been following all the skating hubbub and news?” She asks.

Lu Han shakes her head and she nods.

“Okay, well don’t fixate on the things around you. Whatever’s eating you up, don’t focus on it. Redirect your concentration to yourself and look at what’s in your hands right now, no eyes wandering,” she instructs. 

‘ _Skaters must skate_ ,’ he says to himself. Lu Han skates.

Yixing goes to Trophée Eric Bompard and wins a silver medal. 

Lu Han skates, and then picks up the phone to send his congratulations. 

“Nice skating,” Lu Han says.

“You are a fucker. An absolute fucker. I really don’t even know what to say to you right now. I should hang up, but I know for a fact that you’re brooding your entire fucking face off,” Yixing says to him after a long moment of silence.

“Do you even know what happened?”

“No, I bloody well don’t know what happened! One moment you were fine, the next you were a natural catastrophe unto yourself and Minseok had turned into a kicked puppy. What the hell did you do?” 

“What makes you so certain I did something?” Lu Han replies hotly. 

Yixing does not say a word.

“Okay, fine, I fucked up. Are you happy? You heard it here first, okay, I am a goddamn fuck up, I have regrets, I made a real mistake.” 

“That’s not, I didn’t ask you to pass judgement on yourself, you conceited, self-serving asshole, I asked you what you did!”

“Man, I wish you were on my side for all of this, I did honestly, the stupidest and worst possible thing I could have.”

“Well too bad, because I am not on your side of this, I am so sick of you treating your friends like shit, and if I take your side on this, who knows what kind of bullshit you’re going to pull on me down the road.”

“Trust me, that is not going to be on your list of worries, ever.”

“Yeah? Try me. Just goddamn talk to me, Lu Han, because it’s like someone’s cut off your fucking tongue, that’s how clammed up you are about everything. I don’t even know what’s going on, or why everything feels so wrong and tense, but it’s throwing me off my game too, fucking bastard wouldn’t have gotten first if my assholes for friends would just let me in on what the goddamn hell is going on!”

Lu Han swallows, takes a deep breath, and tells him, “I kissed Minseok after the short at Cup of China.”

A beat. “Well I will fucking be. I owe Sehun like twenty bucks.”

“You were betting on this? I’m going to kill all of you.”

“Sorry, sorry, serious matter, I’ll stop.” 

“Yeah, good.” Lu Han says, running a hand through his hair and sitting down to gather himself. “Saying that out loud makes everything even worse than it already was,” he continues miserably.

“So he what, pushed you away? Told you no? Got out of there?” Yixing presses.

“No, What? No, I ran. How the hell am I supposed to explain myself after something like that?”

“Wait. Wait what the fuck? Let me get this straight. You kissed him, and before he could react, you just left?”

“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Lu Han asks, frustrated. “I couldn’t handle rejection at that moment, it will make it easier, in fact, if I never give him the chance to reject me outright, so I did the cowardly thing and ran, but I don’t think I could have survived otherwise.” 

“Hold up. Hold the fuck up, how do you know he was going to reject you? Did you, like, give him a chance to say something before you ran away?” 

Lu Han does not fling the phone across the room in frustration. 

“Don’t you think if he wanted to say yes he would have reciprocated? You know, kissed back? Let’s face it, in the time between the moment I ruined our friendship and ran out of the room, he was looking for a way to let me down easily and try to pretend that kiss never happened and we could continue being ‘just friends’.” 

Yixing clucks his tongue. “You think very little of yourself, my friend. I don’t think either of us can say that for certain, but I’m guessing you don’t really want me to ask Minseok for the answer.”

“Yixing…Don’t. Just, don’t. If Minseok had to choose between figure skating and the rest of the world, he would choose the world, because that’s what’s important to him. He has his own goals and ambitions and I got angry thinking that I couldn’t be the most important thing, but now I’m angrier that I thought I deserved so much from him. I’m angry at myself for ruining the best thing I ever had.”

“So what are you going to do now, cut off that part of you? That’s got to be like cutting off an entire limb,” Yixing says.

“I’ve just been skating. It’s all I can do, isn’t it? I mean it’s the only thing I know how. Skaters skate, skaters must skate, so I’ve been skating and that’s it. That’s all I’m going to do.” 

“Without Minseok?” is the last thing Yixing says before the call ends.

 

 

Lu Han rebuilds his life without Minseok with every mark he leaves across the ice, carving his blades into the smoothness of recently Zamboni cleared iced, using up the chips of ice to construct an igloo for himself. He lies in the bed he’s made, breathing in moist recycled air and dares to think that one failure isn’t the end. He has Rostelecom on his horizon, and if he can do well, the math still lets him make it to the grand prix finals. It’s all within reaching distance, if only he opens his hand up to seize the opportunities before him.

Moscow in November somehow manages to be even colder than Toronto, and the winter jacket he’s bundled up in does little to stymie the harsh wind. It makes the inside of the rink, a chilly four degrees centigrade or even colder, seem like a tropical beach in comparison. He goes jogging with his coach the morning they get there, and he’s ready to strip down to a t-shirt inside the rink by the time the official practice begins.

The Russian flags hanging from every rafter and held up by every adoring fan are a little intimidating, but he supposes he should get used to this kind of noise, ahead of Sochi. 

He doesn’t think about it. Doesn’t talk about it because no one wants to bring it up around him, it’s the taboo word of the season, among the press, among the coaches, the competitors, and his friends. But it’s Olympic season, Lori had said to him at the beginning of all this, and she’s right, that’s what this is.

Lu Han doesn’t quite understand it. There’s so much value given to the Olympic gold, arbitrarily designated at best, an important competition, but only because everyone else makes it out to be that way. For skaters, for athletes, life happens in groups of four, four years of skating from one games until the next, so-and-so was the dominating skater of this quadrennial, the next quad will be shaped by the changes in the judging system.

The quadruple jump, as well, not to be forgotten, perhaps the buzzword for this quad, _the_ quad, something necessary for all the men’s skaters, and maybe having more than a few is the only key to winning. Last season his record was 87% success. For the summer shows it’s 100%, but for the current season it’s only 66%, and the numbers are all meaningless when you step out onto the ice. Your past doesn’t dictate your future, it doesn’t even help the present. 

Moscow calls, so Lu Han skates.

Lu Han skates like he has a point to prove, but he’s not saying anything to the doubtful media. His skating makes no comment on winning or succeeding, it’s not about landing jumps or placing high on the podium. His skating has something to say. It comes from the music first, filtering through the loudspeakers, descending upon the audience first, before Lu Han begins to move, one foot over the other in back crossovers, arms in their choreographed position. 

He looks out over the audience, he’s looking for someone, the person he needs to speak to. This is a skate that is a conversation discussing all the things Lu Han has left unspoken, communicating the words that will remain unsaid. 

The quad toe is hello. The greeting is set towards the corner of the ice, near the boards. Lu Han plants his left toe pick into the ice and takes off into the air, body squeezed into a tight position. His eyes are focused as he whips his head around once, twice, three times, a fourth time, and landing on the same foot he took off with. The landing he keeps understated, back leg out but not high, not making a statement. He’s sure-footed and steady, his eyes are unwavering and his mind is peaceful. It’s a wave, a small how do you do, have I caught your attention?

A comma follows like someone taking a breath but also waiting for the response. Conversation dips to casual topics, I heard you were sick a while ago, are you feeling better? The regular subjects, the weather, work, the condition of the family. A spin entered with a jump, flying camel, a tip of the hat and ready to say something new. Again, a sit spin this time, and the music is building. 

The triple axel is redemption, solid, as always, transitions in and out, and the combination triple-triple jump that comes after it feels like a plea. Lu Han isn’t begging for forgiveness, but he’s said his piece, and all that’s left is to walk forward, move on, skate forth.

The music tasks him with a step sequence, it demands one, and Lu Han delivers. Bantering, witty repartee, good rapport, one-liners back and forth, back and forth, from one skate to the other, turning on a dime, once here, now there, and counter. It’s electric, feels personal, too intimate to be shared, but there, the audience is clapping along now, keeping the beat to the already pulsating sound of a single violin.

“Capriccioso,” Lori had said, and Lu Han feels alive.

The final farewell is plunging down, the curtains are waiting to be pulled. Lu Han feels the swell crashing down, goodbye, he says, with a stretched knee and pointed toes, then more torque than his body deserves, spinning upward and upward, arm rising up until it disappears above his head and all he can see is the ceiling blurring to a perfect cadence five to one, the end.

Lu Han takes his leave to a chorus of applause, but the speech is over, the dialogue long finished, they can give him a standing ovation but the floor is empty, he’s said his piece. The long program is a reiteration of the same statement, an elongation or an extension at most, it’s not new, but it gets the job done.

And it’s certain a step up from the mess he made in Beijing, it’ll be a program he can go back to Toronto and watch, sit with David and Brian and critique. 

When they call out his name and he steps out into the spotlight, cameras directed in his direction while he accepts the bouquet and the golden medal slung over his head, he tries to smile. The weight of it is heavy against his sternum, and has nothing to do with the size of it. It cost him much to get here, with the strap digging into his neck and the audience politely clapping when they really wanted their hometown favourite to win. 

He wonders if Minseok is watching this medal ceremony right now, maybe from an ISU stream because no one is likely to broadcast this considering the time of day it is. He imagines that even if they’re worlds apart, Minseok would see and notice pained his smile is. The lights flash in his face and he thinks, ‘ _we’re both under the same sky._ ’ They’re standing on the ice, even if they’re in different places. It’s the same planet, and that’s not close, but then, he doesn’t think they’ll ever be close enough for Lu Han to be truly happy anyway. Under the same sky is enough.

He’s not necessarily unhappy. He’s skating. That also, is enough. 

The marks he receives for the short are lower than the ones he received in Beijing, to Lori’s dismay, but not her surprise. 

“It’s a combination of two things, I think,” she says. “One, there’s always the hometown advantage, you’ve always got the audience on your side more when the competition is in the country you’re representing.” 

This is not news to Lu Han, not in the slightest, and he nods his head for her to continue, indicating he understands. He understands more in English now, and much better than he did before. It has less to do with the vocabulary improving, although that may be true, and more to do with the familiarity. Context is everything, just like with skating, he understands the situation better now, and it feels less foreign. The words on his tongue are no longer the enemy.

“The other thing, the much bigger problem, I think, is that people don’t seem to recognize that bulldozing through a program doesn’t mean you’ve artistically done your best. You can have all the energy in the world, throw yourself into every line, use so much effort that you can barely stand at the end, but that doesn’t make it beautiful. The magic comes in the delicacy of the moment, being restrained and knowing what’s appropriate doesn’t make something less beautiful.”

Lu Han chews and swallows this like a piece of ice.

David, for what it’s worth, is delighted. “Keep doing what you’re doing, you’re doing a great job. Your skating is improving and the program is maturing. We’re getting there. We’re seeing an upward climb, and we’re aiming to peak in February, not necessarily early in the season.” He gives Lu Han a hug and sticks around for the full run-through, satisfied that the Cup of China disaster does not look ready to resurface. The reminder about the Olympics is a bucket of ice water over his head.

Lu Han skates, but every time he is on the ice, he’s rebuilding the fundamentals, layering the foundations, and filling it with cement. It’s hardening without the influence of others, but the worry is stagnation and lifelessness. Buildings don’t talk to each other, and Lu Han is rapidly becoming an ugly old tower with no sway. 

 

 

That feeling doesn’t go away.

“I caught a little bit of Cup of Russia,” Jongin tells him over the phone, bringing up the subject of figure skating himself and without prompting. 

“Oh yeah? I didn’t think Korean television or news cared about anyone who wasn’t Yuna, to be honest.” Lu Han flicks off the stove and plates steaming broccoli.

“It was quite a surprise to me too,” Jongin says, “You know, I think I might even miss it.”

Lu Han straightens up and bangs his head on a cabinet. He winces, sets down the wok, and carries the food to the table. “Then lace up your skates again. Come on, you know you want to.”

He waggles his eyebrows and Jongin knows it even if he can’t see his face.

“I already told you why I quit skating, I’m not going to repeat myself,” Jongin says with a huff.

“Well then, don’t do competitions and don’t agree to whatever deals anyone else has set out for you. I’m not saying you should take up sponsorships or anything Listen, just try out one of the exhibition shows or something. You get separate invitations for those so no one has to know except the organizers, until you’re announced as part of the cast. I had a ton of fun at them this season except…”

“Except?”

“Never mind, except nothing, it was great. They’re going to keep knocking on your door so you might as well say yes, if only to throw the people standing behind it off, and surprise them. If you don’t like it, you’re not even committed to a season or anything. You can pull out one of your old exhibition programs and do doubles the entire time, and the audience might not even be able to tell the difference.”

“You make it sound so easy. And so tempting. I know exactly where my skates are. I know where to get them sharpened. No one would bat an eyelash if I showed up at the rink. And the worst part is that my body wants it too. My ankles roll all over the place without having really thick supports, even though I’m not having to balance on two thin blades. Isn’t that weird?” 

“Muscle memory,” Lu Han grunts. He shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet and rolls circles with his ankles. They crack in solidarity.

“Don’t get me started. I wake up and my arms are like in various ballet positions. I can distinctly here that ballet teacher Heechul hired yelling at me whenever I hunch over in my seat or walk with sloppy posture.”

Lu Han clucks his tongue, but he understands the feeling. The dry land trainers at the club are very good at what they do, and take what they do very seriously.

“I don’t want to go back into skating if it’s just things like that though. I want to love it, fall in love just as much as I did the first time.”

“But you haven’t been able to find something you love, have you?” Lu Han cuts in. 

He settles down into his chair and leans back while waiting for Jongin to piece together a response.

“Fair point, but.”

“But what? Not asking you to get married to the sport, hell, I’m not even asking you to give figure skating your phone number. Think of it as a blind date, and whether or not you want to meet up again after the fact is all on your own terms. No strings attached. I won’t even meddle or make you choose a specific show. Not going to mention a single thing. In fact, you know what, I'm going to back off now. I’m going to say it’s your call and whether or not you want to give anything a shot is up to you.”

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” Jongin says, but he’s laughing and Lu Han is genuinely glad they managed to pick up their friendship again. 

“Anyway, I’m going in, hopefully Yixing and Sehun are done having sex now because I have homework to do and I left my textbook at home.”

“Are you really not considering that move to Detroit?” 

“Nah, I’m good here– FUCK, Yixing put on some goddamn pants, do you normally walk around your place in the nude too?” 

Lu Han hears the yes even through the phone and winces. “I’m just going to hang up and let you deal with this by yourself now.”

“You’re not getting out of this just by being halfway around the world. I’m going to make Yixing call you and you can do me the favour of telling him to keep his dick in his pants while I go smack some sense into Sehun.”

“Please don’t,” Lu Han says.

Jongin sounds chipper when he says, “Goodbye!”

 

 

“This is very strange.”

“I don’t get it, what’s strange?”

“I’m calling you, you’re picking up, we’re actually talking,” Yixing lists. “Do I need to go on?” 

Lu Han bites his lip. “Do you want me to apologize? Or should I follow Jongin’s instructions and warn you off being naked all time?” 

Yixing laughs. “Man, I feel guilty now. Congratulations on Rostelecom, by the way. Great skating. Amazing, honestly.” 

“Does anyone actually call it Rostelecom? I’ve honestly not heard a single person, other than the announcers, call it anything but Cup of Russia.” Lu Han deflects the compliment without a second thought.

“I’m calling it like it is, don’t blame me for being in a sport that makes no money in any corner of the world except Japan. I still can’t believe this, you did not give me a single call for the entirety of the 2012-2013 season, and I’ve talked to you no fewer than three times already this year. This is a dream. I’m dreaming.”

“If I could see you right now, I would hit you.” Lu Han says seriously. 

“This is a very violent relationship. I am almost willing to revert back to the past. And now I’m feeling guilty again.”

“I don’t see what you have to feel guilty about. Unless you fucked something else up, please tell me you did not do something stupid that I’m going to have to clean up after you for. Did you and Sehun go to Vegas and get hitched?” 

“Why are you in figure skating, Lu Han, when you could be a stand up comedian? I just mean, it kind of feels like I came between you and Minseok, kind of?”

“Did you say something to him?”

“No, I meant like. In order for us to have our friendship again, you and him had to end, or something.”

“Wow, go for the jugular, Yixing. I’m sorry I kind of threw you away in favour of Minseok.”

“Don’t take it like that, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“No, you’re right,” Lu Han says thoughtfully, “but that’s not where it started at all. It was Jongin who pushed me into ‘reconnecting’ or whatever, being a person instead of a robot. But the only reason that happened is because Jongin had given up figure skating.”

“This is an incredibly slippery slope that no one wants to go down, I really should not have brought this up, I take it all back,” Yixing says desperately. 

“You’ve all made your sacrifices for me. Jongin gave up what he loved the most, you had to suffer through me being the biggest flake in the world, Minseok put up with all of my nonsense but in the end had his trust betrayed, it’s all right here folks.” 

“It might look that way to you, but that’s really not what happened.” 

“The evidence is kind of compelling, and the picture it’s painting is not pretty,” Lu Han says. A beam has been knocked out of him, but he’s not going to go down easily this time. This building is made of stronger materials, sterner stuff, and it can hold down the fort even with a few missing screws. “It’ll be okay, I’ve had all of you making the sacrifices, so I better play my own part, right? The only way I can really repay any of you is if I skate well at this point.”

“I really wish I knew how to explain to you that you have no obligations to any of us. Life isn’t a zero sum game. It’s not like figure skating, just because one of us wins a gold medal doesn’t mean no one else can win that exact same medal at the exact same time.” 

“I’m trying to make amends, Yixing,” Lu Han tries, his voice softening.

“I know. Trust me, I know.” 

 

 

It’s a close thing, but when all the points and results are tabulated, he has just a good enough placement to make it into the grand prix final. It only happens because Minseok has the first place finish for Cup of China but only that event calculated in his grand prix scores, so out of all the skaters, only Henry Lau comes out with two first place finishes at grand prix assignments. The others are a mix of golds, silvers, and bronzes, a wide ranging mix. 

No one outright says as much but he knows that technically, if he had performed at par, or even a little below it instead of turning out an utter nightmare at Cup of China, he would be considered a shoo-in as second place. One mental breakdown away from two gold medals of his own. 

As it currently stands, the media claim that the competition is really Henry Lau and then a race amongst ‘the others’, five men all vying for the silver medal, because no one is considered good enough to touch Lau’s scores this season. Lu Han is, at best, a dark horse, someone who’s never won more than a grand prix event in major international competitions. An outlier of a chance, if even that much exists. 

Between Orser telling him, “Just go out there and do your best, that’s all you need to do,” and none of the predications even mentioning his name for a podium mix, Lu Han has very few expectations going into the competition. 

In advance, Kris drags him along on the club’s unofficial field trip to the new aquarium that opened in Toronto. 

“It’ll be kind of stupid because there won’t be anything really exciting, but it’ll be good for you to get out and see some stuff. Have you done any tourist stuff in Toronto yet?” 

Lu Han tells him no, and gets forcefully pushed into a taxi, squeezed between Kris and the door, while the others pile together and try to spook Samuel, the youngest one, into thinking that they can find away into the water and feed him to the sharks. Samuel, much too smart for any of this, pretends to play along, before seriously saying, “If I get reincarnated as a shark in my next life, I will be sure to bite off all of your heads as slowly as possible.”

Kris ruffles his hair and tells him he’s been learning well. Lu Han is slightly alarmed because Kris should not be responsible for the education of any children, and makes a mental note to take Samuel under his wing during practices more often.

“We should make this a regular thing,” Sera says once they’ve all purchased their own tickets. They ask someone to get a group shot of them with three phones and a camera so at least of them have documented photo evidence that the excursion happened.

“We can pick out a new place every month or so, and bring bagged lunches, chill out for a few hours, get some down time,” she continues after they’ve flashed smiles four different times, as well as made a silly face for one photo, and tried to coordinate a group jumping picture as well (which did not come close to the desired result).

“There are not actually enough places in Toronto for us to do that,” Gina points out, “We’d finish in like, less than a year.”

“No, wait, there’s what. Okay, we’re doing the aquarium now, there’s the museum, the science center, the shoe museum, the CNE, centre island, the art gallery…” 

They get inside and Sera is still listing tourist locations, “Casa Loma, the CN tower, we can expand to Niagara falls, stretch it out by watching a symphony, a ballet, a musical. That’s tons of stuff, this should totally be a thing, don’t tell me it’s not a thing.” 

Kris rolls his eyes. “Why can’t we just, go to the mall? That’s normal and fun.”

Sera blinks, and then scowls in an attempt to mask the fact that this is a much better idea. She tugs Gina away, glaring at Kris once before disappearing down a tunnel to point out the stingrays to someone who thinks are ideas are good.

Lu Han pretends he understood the entire exchange, and Kris pats his arm. “It’s okay, we’ll take you kicking and screaming wherever we end up going, whether it’s shopping or to tourist spots. You think you can stop this from happening but there are way more of us and only one of you.” 

Lu Han nods slowly and turns away to look at the fish.

“It won’t be wasting time, you need to be well rested to perform well too, you know?” Kris says, nudging his shoulder.

“No, it’s fine, I don’t mind being out. I kind of miss…”

Kris doesn’t press. They walk silently past the blue glowing lights, tank after tank and explanation after explanation. It’s eerily quiet, and very peaceful inside the building, and on a weeknight, there aren’t many children. 

Near the exit Kris blurts out, “Are you excited about the rest of the season? Nervous? I’m still fighting for an Olympic spot, but you’ve got a lock on your placement.” He laughs but strangely enough it doesn’t sound bitter.

“I’m more apathetic, I think.”

“Hm,” Kris says, drawing out the sound. He grips the railing tightly as they walk forward, Lu Han much more interested in cooing at the tiny but beautifully striped and coloured fish than the predatory animals.

“This is kind of weird, but when I was in high school, we had this motto. It was hung on a banner in the hallways and it said, ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars’. It’s kind of silly, I mean, technically if you get all scientific about it, the moon is way closer than any of the stars are to us, but the sentiment is nice, isn’t it? If you aim super high, even if you’re a little bit off course or something, you’ll still get good results?” 

Lu Han thinks about it. 

“Then I guess I’ll have to shoot for the stars and hope I’ll reach at least the moon, huh?” 

“Yeah, I’m really not the kind of person to give advice. Good luck in Japan,” Kris says with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Thanks. For the advice, and this trip. It’s been fun.” 

He has an answer now, for how he feels about the upcoming competitions. Where he was filled with dread, he now feels excitement.

 

 

Fukuoka is kind to him, just as it was in the summer previously. There are flags and banners and cute signs for the Japanese skaters, but the fans also have collections of other flags, and they don’t hold back their cheering based on the nationality of the skater. There are women who come armed with enough flowers so that everyone who comes off the ice receives something, and fans line the front row seats for chances to watch the official practices.

They’re quiet and respectful, and Lu Han’s heart goes out to them for spending so much time in the cold and with such a temperamental sport, dedicating emotional energy and investing the money to attend all the events. They don’t stick around just because they’re fans of a single skater, but because they’re fans of skating itself, the figure skating that draws each of them to the sport, the movements and the grace, the athleticism and the finesse, irrespective of whoever performs. 

It’s not a particularly generous sport, there aren’t that many chances for the skaters to give back all the time, but the fans are willing to give parts of themselves, even if it’s for a quick autograph, or a smile and a photo snuck in during the briefest of moments. Between these fans and their dedication, and Lu Han’s friends and the things they’ve come through to get where they are. He feels like he’s been handed a lot of tools and support systems.

This time, when he gets on the ice to skate, he’s not doing it for himself, but for everyone that’s been with him since day one. 

He gives it his best effort. It’s not necessarily the most amazing skate any of the audience members have ever seen, but he manages a higher mark than Cup of Russia, oddly enough, and he sits in second place. The program components score has been on a roller coaster ride for him all season, and none of the judges scores make sense to him anymore. They’re giving him bonus marks, inflation for landing jumps and for being well liked, but it’s starting not to feel like a reflection of his own skating, but rather, a bell curve where he’s simply placed against the other skaters.

Even if there is a first, second, and third place finish in figure skating, Lu Han doesn’t think the marks should be given out like a zero sum game. He thinks back to Yixing’s words and wonders if they withhold marks from some people and then give extra to others just by comparing their performances relative to each other. It makes trying to win seem like the opposite of a lofty goal.

Orser is satisfied with his short program, and Lu Han agrees with him. It was a good skate, and he got what he wanted out of it, namely, the counters all underneath his feet, the landings to jumps smooth and clean, everything within his capabilities. Both hands are on deck, giving back to his friends and to the audience, and in bits and pieces, the skate is also a present to his coach. 

“Let me reassure everyone,” he’s saying. “What happened at Cup of China is a fluke,” and he means it more ways than one. “It’s a mistake I won’t repeat.”

When he goes home that night and finds out that his placement is largely due to the failure of the other skaters – a night that can only be described as a splat fest, it doesn’t dampen or improve his mood. 

“I’m not so affected,” he tells Orser in training the next morning. They don’t have very much time in between to prepare for the free skate, but this is an important discovery for him.

“I’ve learned not to let little things affect me, I’m not going to be distracted by my mood, or other skaters.”

So he takes second place in the short, second place in the free, and second place overall.

Silver is not so bad.

Silver is not what the CSA want from him, they are only interested in paying for a gold medallist, and the past few years are more of an investment than an endorsement. If he doesn’t start paying them back in medals and achievements soon, they’ll pull the plug.

But silver is fairly good. The grand prix final is not the be-all and end-all of skating, it’s one amongst many competitions, but it’s a culmination of the first half of the season, and he’s done a decent job for all three of the grand prix events. At the very least, that needs a pat on the back.

The important thing, it turns out, isn’t the win. It’s knowing that Lau is fallible; Lu Han actually gains on him with the free skate and minimizes the margin between their scores from the short program. It also shows him that he can win a medal with a fall. It’s the quadruples that are giving him trouble, not a constant issue, but he knows it’s their inconsistency that is making or breaking his programs right now.

David will not have any complaints on the choreography, but he’s going to have to do days of just jumps to drill in the landings into his body and make sure his muscles are so prepared to complete the jump that even when he’s under pressure, with the adrenalin pumping at the Olympic games, he can make it. 

Orser lands a hand on his shoulder. “Good. It’s a bit of a zigzag, bronze to gold to silver, but you had different competitors in each event, and the trend is still up.” 

Lu Han isn’t sure how long it can last. 

 

 

The answer comes soon enough.

After the main medal ceremony, where all the fans watch as they’re handed shiny medals and given flags to drape around their shoulders as they lap around the rink, pausing to shake hands with the audience members, they get ushered into a press conference room.

The small medals are handed out, Lu Han’s collection of three silvers completed, one for each event. This is the kind of consistency he needs, rather than coming first in the short and fourth in the free to end up with a bronze. When all the fanfare and national anthems have been played, the finally get to sit down. It’s late as the translators arrive on the scene and the organizers open up the floor to questions.

Lu Han keeps up in the beginning, fingers weaved tightly together on the table in front of them. He keeps his head bowed as he listens. Almost all of the questions are for Lau, asking about his current condition, what his plans are for training, what he predicts will happen at the Olympic games.

Henry Lau is a sweet guy, and humble to boot. He evades almost all of the tricky questions, and honestly tells the press that they should pay some attention to the other skaters at the table as well.

Lu Han, who has tuned out the media with their huge cameras and insistent recorders because of the language barrier, snaps to attention when he hears his name called. “My question is for Mr. Lu. Congratulations on your skate, by the way, it was excellent. Can you comment on any of the artistic or technical differences between Cup of China and now? There’s been quite a progression in your free skate since then.” a reporter comments.

Lu Han clears his throat and brings the microphone closer to him. He says thank you in halting English, before turning to give a look to the Chinese translator. He receives a nod, and he continues the rest of his answer in Mandarin. “I’m going to continue to work harder, hopefully get level fours on all of my spins and step sequences, land all my jumps. I think I did the best I could this time, and I didn't worry about placements or unnecessary things, just focused on my performance and skating.”

Somewhere, Orser is beaming. 

He waits for the translator to finish, but it’s the last answer he’s able to give. Suddenly, at the entrance, there’s a flurry of activity, and an official comes running in to halt the proceedings. They whisper something to the event organizer before showing up beside Lu Han’s coach. 

The organizer abruptly calls the press conference to a halt, much to everyone’s confusion, and the reporters go into a frenzy with their unanswered questions. They mostly swarm Lau, who ducks his head.

Lu Han doesn’t have time to feel sorry for him because Orser is suddenly at his arm, grabbing him and pulling him up out of his chair and away from the crowd.

“Come on,” he says, and Lu Han quickly follows his coach.

“What’s going on?” he asks. 

Orser waves down the Chinese translator again and beckons him over. She has to jog to catch up with them, Orser walking at a speedy clip, and Lu Han trailing not far behind him.

“Please tell him what you told me,” he says, and the translator nods.

“We’ve received word that your mother is in hospital, and the Chinese Skating Association is flying you back to Beijing immediately.”

“What?” Lu Han asks, incredulous. 

Lu Han feels numb, and doesn’t see where he’s going. They turn a corner and he walks into the wall. Orser lays a palm on his lower back and guides him forward.

“Come on,” Orser says again, and he’s being whisked in a bus to the hotel, the translator replaced by an official from the skating association. Lu Han isn’t quite sure how they actually managed to reach the hotel, his mind is still back in the press conference room, and he’s moving, but he can’t actually think about what his feet are doing or he trips.

He gets the distinct feeling that he should be doing something or saying something, although he’s not quite sure what. In the elevator, he finally manages to get out “Is she hurt? Sick? What’s going on? Are we sure it’s my mother?”

“I’m sorry we don’t have more information right now, your aunt tried to get in contact with you but didn’t have a number so she reached us first. It’s all in the early stages so if we get you on a plane now, you’ll be able to see her and hear the conditions from the doctors themselves rather than a scrambled mess from the grapevine,” the official says kindly, and Orser’s hand is back on his shoulder blades again. 

Lu Han doesn’t say a single word.

He has no idea where his key card is, wonders where his skates are as well in a belated thought, but his eyes search and find his bag slung over Orser’s shoulder. He’s never felt more grateful to his coach than when his stuff gets neatly folded and packed into his suitcase while he sits on the edge of the mattress. His head is completely blank. He wants to help pack in case something gets left behind, or if something else goes wrong, he wants to have enough awareness to do something about it.

He sits and his back curves downward. His stomach is empty and heaving, his head pounding, his heart beat rapid in his ribs. He looks down at his hands and they’re shaking violently. He grabs at them, folding them together, but the trembling amplifies and he’s a quivering mess. His feet are weak and his legs tired, nothing moving or obeying his thoughts.

Suddenly, while Orser is zipping up his suitcase, he blurts out, “My mom is in the hospital?” 

“Yes, Han, but it’s going to be okay,” Orser reassures him, the tables turned.

He helps Lu Han up to his feet, but Lu Han struggles to stay standing, much less moving.

“Come on,” Orser says for the third time that day, letting Lu Han lean against him as they rush back downstairs to a waiting taxi. 

“I’m not coming with you,” he tells him.

“But,” Lu Han says, feeling small and discarded now that he’s been deposited in a cab seat and his bags stowed in the trunk of the car.

Orser leans down and squeezes his hand. “I would, if I could, but they don’t have enough room for me, no plane ticket. You need someone to support you who can speak your language and explain things to you if necessary. It’ll be all right, you’ll see. Everything’s going to be fine. And you can call me, anytime you like, you know that.” 

Lu Han doesn’t nod, but the door gets closed in his face, shut firmly. He doesn’t remember the ride to the airport, nor does he remember getting past customs, or boarding the plane. He has a brief glimpse of the moment when he is seated, and then he blacks out. 

 

 

When he comes to, the agent from the skating association is gently shaking his shoulder.

“Wake up, Lu Han, we’re in Beijing. Let’s go,” he says and Lu Han rubs his eyes. He forgets why they’re in Beijing for a while, and the confusion overtakes him just long enough for him to get off the plane without questioning it. When his feet carry him through the terminal, he finally remembers, _mom_.

He blinks once, twice, and reaches up to touch his face. It’s damp with fresh tear tracks, although he doesn’t consciously remember crying, nor does he perceive any feeling when he’s offered a handkerchief to wipe his face. His hands are still shaky and he doesn’t trust himself to do anything but blindly follow. 

“This way,” a nurse directs them in the hospital, and she smiles at him, but Lu Han is horrified. How can she be smiling at this moment, when his mother might be dying, when nothing in this world can possibly be happy. 

She deposits them in front of a non-descript door, and the skating association representative pushes him inside without following. There’s a single light on beside his mother, one light bulb on the bedside table flickering and casting shadows across her face. 

“Mama,” he whispers, and rushes to her side. 

She’s asleep and hooked up to several machines, has an IV drip in her arm. Her hair is greyed, and her face sunken, sallow, and yellow. There are wrinkles lining her forehead, and she looks like she’s aged a decade since he’s last seen her. It can’t have been more than a year or two ago, but he’s kicking himself now.

Yixing had told him to, “Say hi to your parents, you have the time, just go visit.” 

Lu Han is awash with regret.

He runs a hand down her face, so much older, so delicate and vulnerable. She doesn’t stir when he touches her, doesn’t make any signs of life or notice that he’s there, but she’s alive and that’s good enough.

He reaches to take one of her hands into his and presses a kiss against her knuckles, lips brushing gently across calloused skin. He sits and looks at her, and cries the tears that have bottled up within him, shedding the feelings of confusion and trepidation with huge heaving sobs, loud enough to cover the sound of footsteps as a doctor enters the room.

“Are you her son?” the doctor asks, and Lu Han turns around slowly.

“Yes,” he says, and his voice cracks as he says it. His throat is dry, enough so that the sound almost doesn’t make it out of his mouth. But worse, he feels ashamed to say it, he doesn’t deserve to call himself a son when his mother’s in this bad shape. It feels wrong to call himself her flesh and blood.

“Well then, let’s get you up to date on the facts.”

They run a barrage of tests on him, and for the first time in his life, Lu Han donates blood. She’s lost a lot, and still has a surgery to go through. The blood might not go directly to her, but it increases the hospital’s supply, which is good enough. The doctors force him to lie down afterward, and the CSA rep is still hovering around, apparently on orders from his coach to take good care of him while they’re in China since Orser can’t do it himself.

Lu Han eats from the hospital canteen, but nearly upchucks everything he tries to consume so in the end, the rep feeds him just water, and reads a newspaper while Lu Han sits in his mom’s room. 

His father returns from work late in the evening. Lu Han looks up when he hears footsteps and when their eyes meet he freezes in place.

“Lu Han,’ his father whispers.

Lu Han is gripped with anger.

For all he doesn’t deserve to call himself his mother’s son, his father is not deserving of his title. 

“Father,” he says tightly, and rises. He balls his hands up into fists and ignores the rep that tries to get him to sit down and relax. 

“You’re here,” his father says simply, walking further into the room. It’s all Lu Han can do to stop himself from barring his teeth. Now that his father is closer, and in better lighting, he can see the hallowed look in his face. He looks weary, not as aged as his mother, but bone-tired.

It doesn’t make him feel any more forgiving.

“That’s right,” he says, “I’m here, and it’s absolutely no thanks to you.”

“Don’t blame me,” are the first words out of his father’s mouth and Lu Han snarls. He doesn’t throw a punch, but it’s a close thing.

“Don’t blame you?” He shrieks. “I got the call from your sister instead of yourself, because apparently you didn’t think it was important enough that your wife’s health was deteriorating for you to call your son!”

“You were busy, you’re always busy, I didn’t –”

“You didn’t what, you didn’t even try to contact me? Her ALT levels have been sky high for months, I know, I asked the doctor if this was sudden and he showed me the goddamn records.” Lu Han’s voice is like ice.

“It’s liver cirrhosis, people survive from that. Your mother didn’t want to worry you –”

“People also die from it! Hello, it’s a fatal disease? I can’t believe you think that’s an excuse! Since when have you been the kind of person to listen to what she says anyway? What kind of father are you? What’s wrong with you? How can you do this to me?” Lu Han screams, chest heaving with exertion.

Suddenly, he hears his mom calling out his name, “Lu Han,” she whispers shakily. He rushes to her side again, feeling guilty that his shouting at his father must have woken her up.

“You’re here,” she says, an echo of what his father had to say, and he wonders if he had really abandoned his filial duties so completely that they’re both so surprised by his presence. 

“Of course I’m here,” he says, swallowing a lump in his throat. “Where else would I be?” 

She smiles a little, and studies his face for a while, before falling back asleep.

When Lu Han looks up, his father is gone again.

His phone is flashing with notifications when he fishes it out of his bag a little while later, taking it out into the hallway so as to not disturb his mother again. Jongin had sent him a cute “hang in there” message, and Orser coach had sent him a supportive text as well. He has two voicemails, and presses the phone to his ear to listen to them.

The first is from Yixing. “Hey, Lu Han, I heard what happened from your Aunt. She called me looking for you because she didn’t have your number, so maybe you should give it to more of your family members. I hope your mother’s fine, I’m sure she’ll return to full health in no time. Let me know if you want to talk or want me to visit. See you.” 

The second is from Minseok. “Hey. Um, it’s me. I was just worried. I hope everything is okay. We’re all praying for you and your mom. Take care.” 

Lu Han turns off his phone and lets himself cry.

 

 

He and his father sit at opposite ends of the hallway during his mother’s surgery, occupying seats as far apart as possible. It’s not necessarily a mutual decision, but when Lu Han had arrived, his father was already seated, and Lu Han had simply chosen to take the seat a dozen chairs down. 

Lu Han is done grieving at this point because his mother isn’t dead, and he swears himself to visit her more often, to see how she’s doing, and get an honest answer out of her. He supposes that calling during holidays would be an improvement as well to what he’s been doing so far. The doctors come out to tell them that the surgery was successful and everything had gone off without a hitch.

When she’s rolled back into her room for recovery, Lu Han falls asleep against her shoulder, and doesn’t question the blanket that appears over his arms when he wakes up.

His mother wakes up a little while later, not much longer after him. She looks pained, but her smile when she sees his face is blinding, and it makes Lu Han’s heart catch in his throat. 

“I’m so proud of you, son,” she says, and Lu Han’s eyes are brimming with tears again. 

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m glad you’re here. Lean down, let me touch your face.”

They embrace for a long time, awkwardly because she’s still lying down, but a hug nonetheless. 

“I’ve missed you,” she tells him.

“I know. I’ve missed you too. I love you,” he says, “I should have come back more. I’m sorry, I’ve been a terrible son.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t love you so you can say nice things to me or do me favours, Lu Han. I just love you as you are. Knowing that you, my son, exist on this world, successfully pursuing what you love, that’s way more important to me.” 

“Mama,” he says, and presses his nose against her cheek. 

“Your father loves you too, you know? And I know you love him. It’s different, you two had different expectations for each other, and different expectations for how a father-son relationship should go, but you’re still family.”

Lu Han sighs a little, but doesn’t disagree with her nor dissuade her. 

He kisses her cheek, and sits upright. They look at each other, trying to remember the contours of each others’ faces, checking for differences after being split apart for so long. His mother is still his mother, after all, and knows him better than he knows himself. 

That doesn’t mean there’s nothing she’s wrong about, even if it warms him to the toes to think that she’s proud of him.

Lu Han doesn’t leave until it’s almost time for Chinese Nationals, by which point is mother is pointing him in the direction of the exit, forcefully asking the CSA rep to take him back to the skating rink.

“Don’t worry about me,” she says, “I’m not that old yet, I’ll survive.” 

Lu Han can’t say no to her, and agrees to leave after finding out that she’s to be cleared for discharge soon with a clean bill of health. He waits for her to fall asleep before he leaves, whispering sweet nothings as his thumb strokes her hand gently. Lu Han leaves a final kiss on his mother’s forehead, and untangles their fingers from each other with reluctance.

When he turns he notices his father’s presence, silent and stoic. He passes by his father without looking at him, brushing past with equal coldness and calmness. 

“Lu Han, wait,” his father calls out after him, desperation in his voice. He puts his hand on Lu Han’s shoulder. “Congratulations on winning the world championships.”

“I’ve never actually been world champion,” Lu Han replies, removing his father’s hand firmly. 

It’s always been like this, his father has never accepted the fact that his son was a figure skater, was never supportive, and had never gotten over the fact that Lu Han would never end up attending the top tier university he had always expected him to go to. He thinks he’s ready to accept this now, with his mother’s love seared into his heart, he walks away, leaving his father’s hand hanging limply by his side, but the space in his heart healed over.

 

 

Upon his return to the club, the members gather around him with well wishes and ask after his mother’s health. He’s caught like a deer in headlights, fumbling to say ‘thank you’ and ‘she’s fine’. Orser extracts him from the centre of the mob.

“Don’t you guys have something to do? Like, maybe training?” He chides, shooing them back onto the ice, “Do you really think you have time to waste?” 

Lu Han isn’t quite grieving, but he must look worse for wear than usual, because Orser asks him, “Are you ready to come back? Nationals are just a formally at this point, the officials have you named for the Olympic team anyway, we can call for special circumstances. I just want to make sure you’re feeling fine.”

“I’m okay,” Lu Han tells him, “shaken up, but not broken down.” 

Orser nods because he trusts him, and Lu Han thinks about Kris, who knows that his selection for the Olympics or Worlds hangs on his nationals’ placement, and uses that fact to motivate himself. Yixing is depending on his grand prix finishes to boost him, but his fight will also be for an Olympic berth. He owes it to them to show up and do his best even if he’s not feeling one hundred percent motivated. 

What he doesn’t account for, however, is the media that swarm him the moment he arrives in China, now acutely interested again after his second place finish at the grand prix final. They want to turn him into a spectacle and paint him as someone with a tragic story winning against the odds. Lu Han feels grossly uncomfortable and he understands what Jongin means when he says that other people can take away your love for something.

It’s a lose-lose situation. If he wins, he’s triumphed over adversary and they praise his accomplishment, if he loses they’ll say he’s downtrodden and glorify his loss. 

China doesn’t need another article breeching his privacy to find out more about his life at home, his relationship with his parents, or the name of the hospital his mother is staying at. It needs for its reporters to cover the younger skaters who are up-and-coming and deserve sponsorship so they can grow into their potential. It needs sports journalists ready to dig into the backstories of new skaters so they can be given the time of day.

That’s what got Lu Han here in the first place, someone who decided to give him a chance, and it’s brought him a long way. Whether or not he can be considered a success, he’s come a hell of a lot further because he’s had the CSA’s backing and those breakout stars only happen if you give them a shot. 

If he deserved the risk, then all of them do, really.

It takes forever to get past all the people with questions in the hotel lobby, clobbering over themselves while he tries to check in and pretend that they haven’t dragged in a ruckus. 

“Sorry for the disturbance,” he says to the man at the front desk, but he’s already busy calling security to take the reporters away.

He’s thankful just to be able to lie down on the bed in his hotel room, the walls thick enough to block out any and all sound. The quiet is comforting because his brain seems noisy enough without having everyone else add to it.

By accident he dozes off a little, still in his clothes from the plane ride, body on top of the covers instead of underneath them. He’s woken up by a soft knock on his door. He picks himself up off the bed and pads over to investigate. 

Through the eyehole he sees Yixing’s patient expression and unlocks the door for him.

“Hey,” he says.

Yixing doesn’t bother replying, just pulls him into a hug. They stand together like that for a while, shoulders between the doorway. Lu Han buries his face into Yixing’s shoulder and Yixing rubs circles on his back.

“You good?” He asks, finally, taking a step back. 

“Yeah, I’m good.” 

The familiar presence beside him makes the empty stands but crowded media reserved seating a little more bearable. They’re not watching him as much as they’re waiting for him to do something, put on a show so they can get a story and almost none of them are Chinese, just international reporters ready to be first to get the scoop. Skating’s not a tabloid sport; he’s not sure why this little story will sell. 

Yixing places second and Lu Han comes first. The headline of the day is ‘Chinese National Champion sets Sights on Olympic Games,’ which is technically true because it’s the next competition but not in the way they mean it. 

He’s way too excited for Yixing to even think about anything else. Pushing his way through the crowd, he can see his face drawn into a confused expression, the one that betrays how little situational awareness he has.

“You did it!” He’s yelling into Yixing’s ear over the sound of everything else, fans, the announcers, the music playing, cameras clicking and officials and managers all trying to direct people and make the skaters listen to what they have to say. Lu Han doesn't have much more clue about what’s going on than Yixing does, but he knows one thing for certain.

Yixing shakes his head even as Lu Han thumps him on the back. The smile on his face is genuinely happy for the cameras for the first time in a long while, and the euphoria, despite what the reports will say, has nothing to do with his own placement.

They’re quickly given national team uniforms and shepherded into a waiting room with the pairs and ladies skaters, while the president of the Chinese Skating Association speaks into a microphone.

When Yixing is announced as the second skater to attend the Olympic games, Lu Han feels a jerk on his arm.

“What?” Yixing asks him, and Lu Han laughs.

“Is your brain fried? I thought you’d already figured it out by now, you’re going to Sochi!” 

“Wait, Lu Han,” he manages before they’re being pushed out onto the ice as a group to smile for the waiting cameras. The audience applauds extra loudly, as if to make up for the lack of numbers. “This is surreal.”

Lu Han keeps his hand around Yixing’s waist while they wave and pose to keep himself afloat.

 

 

At three in the morning on a day in early January, Lu Han sits under the covers with his laptop on the bed, the screen illuminating his face and a small spot in the room. He should be sleeping, not distracted by the sounds and video stream. If anyone knew what he was doing, they would tell him to focus on himself, and Lu Han would agree, but continue watching. Suddenly, his phone rings.

He picks up and mumbles, “Hello,” shocked that someone would be calling him at this hour.

“Heya, are you watching the Korean nationals right now?” Yixing says, very much awake because it’s four in the afternoon in Seoul, which is a normal human time to be functioning. 

“Yixing, it’s three in the morning in Toronto, why are you calling me?” 

“Yeah, but you’re awake,” he accuses, “besides, since they didn’t let me tag along because coach wanted me to practice, I have no one to commentate with, and none of them can hear my cheering.”

“Please,” Lu Han asks, “spare me from your screaming voice too. If you’ve been left behind to practice, shouldn’t that be what you’re doing right now anyway?”

“Don’t be a party pooper,” Yixing admonishes. “Heechul, Minseok and the others all left for Goyang together, so I’ve been pretty much alone at the rink. No one will find out if I skive for a day.” 

“This is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to be doing right now.”

“Isn’t that a little hypocritical coming from you, considering the fact that you definitely shouldn’t be awake but I can hear the sound of your stream over the phone? I don’t know if you have any place to be righteous about this.”

Lu Han sighs, and lets Yixing talk his ear off over the next several hours for the ladies’ short program and the men’s free skate. 

“My phone bill for long distance calls is going to be through the roof this season,” Lu Han complains.

“I know for a fact that you have a long distance plan expressly for this purchase, stop complaining and let me complete my celebratory dance.”

Lu Han can hear Yixing knocking something over in his excitement. He’s excited for Minseok as well, somewhere inside him, but the feeling is overwhelmed by growing dread.

“It’ll be like old times, when we were doing junior grand prix events together. Remember the junior worlds podium in 2008? Can you imagine if we managed to recreate that podium?” Yixing asks, laughing.

Lu Han remembers, he was seventeen going on eighteen and that was the last year he and Minseok had participated in the junior level, they had graduated to senior competitions the season after. It had been Lu Han first, Minseok second, Yixing third, but they weren’t training mates yet, not until the retired Kim Heechul decided that he would take on more protégées the next season.

“The last of the metal rods in my thigh were finally removed so I can almost run around again. I’ve been bored since my injury and retirement so upping the workload seems like a good plan,” he said to reporters with a gleam in his eye. Right after the 2008 junior worlds medal ceremony, he went full recruitment mode and convinced Lu Han that he could try university and skating simultaneous in Seoul, and the CSA had shipped Yixing along with him.

Yixing and Lu Han had been friends for years by that point, and best friends for a few as well, passing each other in local competitions, and eventually assigned the same coach and the same rink during the junior years. Minseok was “that guy who was the first Korean skater to land a triple axel in ISU competition,” a nice guy off the ice, and pleasant to interact with during competitions. They slotted around him at Heechul’s club snugly, motivating each other to do better, and always being the source of each other’s work ethic on ice, and the three of them were friends who joked around off ice.

The next year, Yixing won junior worlds, and Lu Han and Minseok weren’t even able to break top ten in the senior competition, and after a few more years they had really deviated paths, Minseok’s took him to a life of academics, Lu Han’s brought him all the way to Canada. If someone had asked his teenage self on the podium whether he thought that any of it was possible, he would have laughed in their face. Or, maybe he would have been more believing, after all, he was gutsier back then than he is now. 

“Keep dreaming,” Lu Han says to Yixing in the present, “because that’s what I’m about to do, I nee to go back to bed.” 

Soon after, Kris comes back from the Canadian national competition with a chance to skate at the Olympics, the third Canadian berth, but a position nonetheless. 

“I feel really, incredibly lucky,” Kris says. “I’m going to be on the ice with you guys and people will be taking my picture and watching me skate. This is crazy! I’ll come home and I’ll be able to tell everyone I’m an Olympian. You have to prep me, you’ve been before, tell me what it’s like.”

Lu Han remembers when he was more or less in Kris’s shoes. Leading up to Vancouver, Henry Lau had been considered in podium contention, but Lu Han had been a nobody, along for the ride and the experience. He’d been thankful just to place within the top twenty. They’ve both grown since then, and Lu Han wonders if he’s done enough to catch up. 

“Enjoy it,” he tells Kris, “live in the moment and soak it all in. It’s a rare opportunity, and an amazing experience. Don’t let it get to your head. You’ll feel like a tiny speck in the huge universe, but just have fun.” 

He wants to give himself the same advice, but it might be too late. The feeling in his stomach is terrifyingly chronic now, a kaleidoscope of butterflies beating their wings and trying to escape through his mouth. His judgement day is approaching, but for the life of him, he can’t figure out if it has anything at all to do with figure skating. 

Rather than dwelling, the rest of January passes by in a blur, countless hours on the ice and in the weight room, building endurance and stamina, strength and aiming to arrive at peak fitness coinciding with their arrival in Sochi.

 

 

Sochi is warm. That’s the first thing he notices when he steps off the plane. The 2012 grand prix final was here too, and he had placed second then. Lu Han doesn’t know that this place with its empty streets and vast ice rink will be kind a second time, not when the place and the context are so different.

The Olympics have been dancing on the edge of Lu Han’s mind throughout the season, a gentle nudge that comes every so often when he skates. But the Olympics are unpredictable, and it’s not about odds or even hard work, it’s about the mental game and Lu Han’s been losing on that front spectacularly all season. A tiny chip in his armour and his entire program comes crashing down. His is a crumbling cookie, leaving bits and pieces of him everywhere he goes. By the time he reaches Sochi, he might not be more than a tiny bite.

The weight on his shoulders is light, because he isn’t carrying any expectations into the games, unlike Henry, who is twice cursed as reigning world champion and as a male Canadian singles skater. The gold medal has eluded all of the Canadian men who have ever tried. Henry is optimistic, Henry, who is probably relieved at the season he’s having, first at both his grand prix assignments and a gold at the grand prix final. It’s the kind of season he wants to have ahead of the games. Even so, rumours follow him, all whispering about peaking too early. Kris had been at Canadian nationals and reported that he was expecting something magical like Lau’s grand prix final performance, but he had two falls between his programs, and was showing cracks in what was previously considered a flawless façade. 

There’s a soft buzz that follows all of them wherever they go, in the form of the media, but also the fans and the officials. Lu Han find that it’s hard to get any time or space to himself and even though security tries to keep unwanted individuals, or those without clearance, at bay, they’re still constantly surrounded by people. The security checkpoints are constantly packed with extended line-ups, and he suspects that just standing in a queue now is starting to put him on edge. 

It all makes Lu Han feel very lonely, to be stuck in a sea of others without anyone to really talk or connect to, just another skater, someone only special enough for other people to want to be near him in proximity but not enough that they know who he really is. At least eventually Yixing and the Chinese contingent to the games will arrive, and then his wing of the hotel (rooms assigned by country, not by coach) will be better lived in.

Orser sets them all on their way to bed almost immediately after dinner, and even checks in on all of them an hour and a half later to make sure they’re actually sleeping instead of bunked out together and having a sleepover party. 

“Seven a.m. wake up, you’ll get a call,” he says when he comes around to Lu Han’s quarters. “We’re going to keep to a strict sleeping and eating schedule so your bodies get over the jet lag as soon as possible and we get you operating in optimal condition for the days of the actual competition.

He’s woken up by the ring of the phone in the morning, but goes back to sleep almost immediately, and doesn’t rise until it’s nearly time for breakfast. He hurriedly pulls on a pair of sweatpants and a shirt, tries to brush his teeth and his hair at the same time, and rushes out the door, hoping that he’ll get a chance later in the day to take a shower.

The combined teams of culinary staff, CSA officials, and members of Orser’s camp have planned all the meals meticulously for maximum nutrition and health benefits, complete with calculated portion size. Lu Han’s breakfast fills him as they walk to the iceberg skating palace.

Technically, they’re not allowed to skate off official ice time because it’s shared and scheduled to rotate so everyone has an equal chance to get in some practice.

“We want to get you used to that walk from the hotel to the rink, get familiar with the changing rooms, circle around the boards once, or as much as you can. Get a feel for the temperature of the building, the moisture in the air, and the size of the ice. It’s definitely a lot bigger than anything any of us are used to, so there might be some need for adaptation. Although, once the seats get filled and people are packed into this place it’ll be a different feeling again, with different noises and feelings, but here’s to hoping that you and the ice are good friends by then.”

Lu Han smiles wryly. Kris is enchanted by everything they get around to doing, but Lu Han feels like he’s getting old. The Olympic village and the people, the places, they’re still magical, but Lu Han also feels tired by the high energy in the air, and they’ve only been around for 24 hours. They eat lunch as a group, and gossip spreads about some of the athletes in other disciplines who have arrived, and people boast about spotting celebrities. The excitement in the air is palpable, but it seems to be leaving a bubble around Lu Han.

“No plans for the afternoon, although there are some great gym facilities here,” Orser says when they clear their plates. Lu Han thinks that sounds mightily like a nudge in a specific direction. “There’s also an athletes lounge with things to relax, and you can explore the place a bit. Don’t wander too far, don’t get lost, and make sure someone knows where you are.” 

Kris finds him sweaty and tired after a good cardio workout. The machines in the weight room were much higher quality than almost any of the rest of the supplies in the buildings, but Lu Han hadn’t wanted to test them out. He shows him a picture of Orser and himself standing in the Olympic rings near the entrance to the village.

“You really took it to heart when I told you to have fun, didn’t you?”

“Yep, going wild now. I’ll take you down there tomorrow, you should take a picture there too, it’s mandatory for all Olympians.”

“Oh yeah? You would know right?”

“Absolutely. You should trust me, because I’m an Olympian.” Kris says seriously, nodding his head and using his height to look down at Lu Han, daring him to say otherwise. 

Lu Han nods with an expression as serious as he can manage before leaving Kris in the lobby of the hotel so he can get to his rooms and shower. 

He thinks he should be grateful that the water isn’t a strange colour or oddly murky, even if the water pressure is temperamental and the temperature is tepid at best. He towel dries his hair and steps out into the room wearing a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. He opens the door and hears it hit something. Poking his head around, he sees Yixing in the hall. He has one hand on his suitcase and the other bracing his body against the wall. 

“Lu Han!” Yixing’s voice cries. “The man of the hour!” 

“Oh, you’re finally here.”

“Yes, I know my presence is dazzling and we’ll have plenty of time to catch up later, but right now I’ve got to get going.” 

“Wait a minute, what’s going on, why are you leaving instead of unpacking?” Lu Han asks, making a confused face while closing the bathroom door behind him. 

Yixing continues talking as if Lu Han had stayed silent, “– so he’s supposed to be rooming with that pairs skater who snores loudly enough that you can hear him from the room across the hallway, but I’m willing to make grand sacrifices for my best friend.”

“Huh?” Lu Han says articulately, peering down the hall to see if he can spot whoever it is that Yixing’s talking about.

“We’re switching dorms, it’s all very against the rules, probably considered fraternizing with the enemy but he probably won’t notice that my Korean accent is absolutely atrocious and it’ll all be good. You can thank me later with, like, a pack of a hundred face masks or a spa trip or something. We’ll figure it out. Ta ta!” 

Yixing hitches up the handle to his suitcase and breezes past him and the rolling wheels of his suitcase squish Lu Han’s toe as he goes. Lu Han winces and brings his knee up so he can reach his fingers to rub at the sore spot through his slippers. He finally notices that their door is being propped open, not necessarily a difficult task considering the quality of the door itself and the poor craftsmanship of the hinges. 

“He’s still totally clueless about what’s going on, I have no idea what you see in him, honestly, but the room’s all yours. And if he kicks you out you can sleep in the hallway, I ain’t getting up once I’m asleep on a bed. Understood?” Yixing says to a figure looming in the doorway, before swapping key cards with them.

Before the person has a chance to response, Yixing is sweeping past, them, rolling his suitcase down the hallway and disappearing. 

Lu Han shifts his line of sight, eyes flickering over to the other individual and comes face to face with Minseok.

“Oh,” he says dumbly, and tightens the belt around his waist.

“This wasn’t my idea,” are the first words that come out of Minseok’s mouth.

Lu Han’s face goes from shock to hurt and then quickly flickers to neutral. He had messed things up so badly that Minseok didn’t even want to be in the same room as him. Lu Han had taken the phone call when his mom was hospitalized to mean they just needed distance or time, but it seemed like there was nothing salvageable left in their friendship, the way Minseok was telling it. He tilts his head and flicks water off his hair.

“Well, come in anyway, you don’t have to sleep in the hallway,” he says, voice tight and even. He turns around and grabs his stuff before leaving Minseok to unpack without another word.

He sits in the canteen and waits for Yixing long after he’s finished dinner. The Chinese athletes around him come and go, and he says hi to someone of the ones he knows, but keeps his eyes on the look out. He needs to find Yixing and rip him apart for his terrible idea, but Yixing never shows. There are other places to eat in the village, of course, but he had really thought that Yixing would be at the canteen. Then again, Heechul is nowhere to be seen, so maybe not. Heechul was also too much of a meddler for his own good and might have even helped Yixing with his plan. Lu Han shakes his head at the thought.

He spends the rest of the evening avoiding Minseok by hanging out with Kris on the sofas in the lounge area, watching others play rounds of Super Smash Brothers and laughing at the skaters all yelling at each other in their own languages. He returns to the room to find it empty, although Minseok’s suitcase is still there, so he’s presumably sticking around even if he doesn’t really want to be Lu Han’s roommate. This is okay, he can work around their schedules like this, being in one the other isn’t, trading off times to have the space to themselves. That’s okay, he convinces himself as he falls asleep.

In the morning, the lump on the bed beside him groans when Lu Han’s alarm rings. Minseok had returned sometime then, Lu Han muses, before quickly shutting off the alarm and rushing downstairs. Their first official practices begin, and they only have a few days left before the games begin. The ice feels huge and intimidating even when there’s half a dozen people sharing it at a time, he can’t imagine what it’s like to be standing over the center, with all those eyes watching you, and no one else in your space. There’s almost too much of it, he finds when he skates a run-through of his short, like the ends of the ice and the boards are too far apart for the spacing and the blocking that he’s accustomed too, but it’s not only him that’s having a hard time. By the end of it, he feels exhausted from trying to cover all the extra space in his step sequences and Orser hands him a water bottle, as well as instructions to keep up the cardio exercises in the gym. 

Afterwards there’s press to deal with, all of them excited as the skaters dutifully walk down the line, answering one or two questions, and then fleeing from their sheer numbers. He looks over to Kris, who was slotted into the same time as he was so that their coach doesn’t have to make the two trips to the ice for them, and notices how stunned he looks. Even Lu Han can’t remain unfazed in the face of the media’s enthusiasm, and gets caught up talking to two Chinese reporters until Orser manages to detach their claws from him and he escapes. 

The next time he sees Yixing isn’t until they’re marching in the parade of athletes at the opening ceremonies. Lu Han’s nervousness has turned a little bit into anticipation and excitement. His practices have been going really well, his jumps are solid, he’s regained his speed and the vastness of the rink is hindering him less and less. He spots Yixing in the group and waves his miniature Chinese and Russian flags at him eagerly. They squeeze past some of the other athletes to stand by each other, drinking in the sights and the sounds around them with wide-open mouths. 

“I’m going to forget to say this later, but good luck!” Yixing shouts into his ear. 

“Thanks, you too!” Lu Han says loudly back. He thinks this is a sneaky tactic, having them converse like this amongst the throngs of people. Lu Han can’t yell at him because they’re surrounded by others, and because the noise around them isn’t necessarily suitable for extended conversation anyway. 

“Okay, that’s not what I was talking about, but thank you,” Yixing says. Lu Han doesn’t have time to question it because the ceremonies are continuing again. 

It’s an audio-visual spectacle. Not for the first time, Lu Han thinks that this is all so much bigger than all of them, thousands and thousands of people gathered together to share in something that they can only each taste a part of. He’s getting that lost speck feeling again, but then Yixing’s arm wraps around his shoulders, and he feels a little more empowered, and a lot more grounded. 

 

 

He draws fourth skater in the penultimate flight. It’s not a terrible draw, gives him time to regroup after the warm-up, but it means he’ll have to sit through several skaters after him until he knows what his placement is. As soon as he thinks of it, he tells himself to ignore the placements because he’s just here to do his best. ‘ _Skaters must skate,_ ’ Lu Han tells himself. There should be an amendment to that dictating that that’s all they should do, not overthink everything.

The day of, he and Minseok have schedules too aligned for them to avoid each other, and Minseok grabs him as he’s coming out of the bathroom.

“I have something to return to you,” Minseok says to him, voice quiet, and eyes not quite meeting his.

“O…kay…” Lu Han says. His mind comes up with half a dozen things it could be, a very drastic method to get rid of a rival, a talisman that helps him, a talisman that gives him bad luck. Lu Han can’t think of a single thing that he’s actually given to Minseok that the other might want to return however.

He’s still considering this when Minseok presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

Before he can say or think or do anything, Minseok’s already taken a step back, a small half smile on his lips. 

Lu Han’s brain goes into overdrive.

“I just wanted to say good luck. Go get the gold,” Minseok says sincerely. 

‘ _What the fuck?_ ’ Lu Han’s voice is shouting at him, circuits shorted from an inability to process what’s happened. 

He doesn’t get a chance to ask what that was because Minseok slips out the door, skate bag over his shoulder, and is gone before Lu Han’s even able to open his mouth.

Definitely a diversionary tactic. Lu Han dismisses it and contains everything to do with the past minute in a file in his mind that he immediately quarantines. He doesn’t have time to think about it or be distracted about it. He has a competition to skate. 

He arrives at the rink and purposefully does not look in Minseok’s direction, although this makes him acutely aware of where he is at all times because he’s so focused on avoiding him. As soon as the event begins, however, they’re all off into their own mind spaces and physical spaces, honing down last minute relaxation and visualization exercises as far away from everyone else as possible. 

His warm-up is good, his jumps are good, his body feels good, and even his mind feels fine, everything is at one hundred percent.

The trouble is that the Olympics isn’t about giving it 100%, it’s about going to 150% and beyond.

Lu Han’s skating is good, but the problem is that he doesn’t leave everything out on the ice.

The quad toe is textbook. It’s perfect; he thinks that for the next quad, younger skaters are going to shown a video of that quad when they’re being taught. The technique is spot on, the thrust of the toe pick, the position in the air, height, speed, tightness of the body, clean landing, right in the corner of the ice, easy as you like. 

The flying camel spin, the sit spin, the step sequence, everything gets a level four and positive grades of execution. It’s wham, bam, thank you ma’am, even for the triple lutz-triple toeloop combination. If he had been waiting for a time to show the best of his skating skills and performance ability, movement, and footwork, he had waited until this moment and Lu Han delivered. 

But he two foots the landing of the triple axel. It’s his favourite jump, his most confident and consistent jump, but his landing foot doesn’t end up in the right position, and his second foot gets caught on the ice, and the audience gasps audibly as he attempts to stay upright. He makes it, just barely, but sends himself on a spin before he can get back into the program, and it’s a blemish on an otherwise spotless performance.

He doesn’t completely understand how it happens, even when he’s finished and bowing, and his coach has an arm around his back, pulling him into a hug. It doesn’t make sense, he doesn’t make mistakes on the axel, and it’s throwing him for a loop. Brought down mentally by the tiniest mistake, even though he knows, objectively, it was a pretty good skate. The problem is that it’s the Olympics and sometimes ‘pretty good’ isn’t good enough.

He’s still trying to make heads or tails of it when the scores go up, and it’s his highest mark of the season, and a world record to boot. The Olympic inflation of scores doesn’t surprise him, and he doesn’t think the marks will stand. He sits in the backstage waiting rooms nervously staring at the TV, while Kris grins beside him, happy just to have qualified for the free skate. 

Lu Han sits on his hands for the entirety of the final flight. By the end of the evening the standings are thus. Henry Lau, breaking his world record, is in first place, 0.81 points ahead of his score. Minseok sits in fourth and Yixing in seventh, but the score difference between third and eighth place is less than a point and a half. They’re all in podium contention. 

All of the numbers are so insignificant. Lu Han knows what he’s done wrong now, or rather, what it is that he hasn’t done right. He has something to say, something important, and he wasn’t able to say it with his skate. Who knows if it was cowardice or a lack of understanding, the point is that he’s still holding the thought close to his heart. His mind is made up, the words have to be spoken.

 

 

He opens the door to their hotel room and find Minseok pulling on a shirt. Lu Han’s eyes linger appreciatively over his toned torso before their eyes meet and Lu Han clears his throat.

“Let’s talk,” he says, and takes three giant strides inside. 

“Okay,” Minseok says, his voice quivering with something akin to fear, but he doesn’t hesitate or move backwards as Lu Han approaches him. 

He leans close and he can smell the scent of Minseok’s aftershave, as well as that persistent smell of ice rinks that seems to cling to all of them no matter where they go. From this close Lu Han can count each of Minseok’s individual eyelashes, but then he slides their lips together and closes his eyes.

Lu Han kisses him slowly, tenderly, because it might be his only chance, and he’s going to make the best of it for as long as Minseok isn’t pushing him away. Minseok’s lips are dry but soft and Lu Han opens his mouth to suck lightly at his bottom lip and then slips his tongue against Minseok, Minseok who is pressing back against him, tongue easily coaxed into deepening the kiss. Lu Han reaches a hand to cup Minseok’s jaw, wraps his other arm around Minseok’s back but then Minseok turns his head, breaking off the kiss. Lu Han opens his eyes and looks at him searchingly.

“You said you wanted to talk,” Minseok says, a little breathlessly. “This isn’t talking.”

“Don’t you think,” Lu Han says slowly, brushing his thumb across Minseok’s cheek, “that this is saying a lot more than any conversation could communicate?” 

Minseok shifts uncomfortably under his touch and looks Lu Han in the eye.

“You said it was a mistake, the first time. I can’t, I can’t have you keep drawing away like that, what if this is just another mistake?” Minseok says, and the fear is back.

“It wasn’t, I didn’t think you were a mistake, Minseok,” Lu Han whispers against his cheek, “I want this. I want _you_. I thought…I thought, when you had looked at me like that, that I had made a mistake because it wasn’t something you wanted and I had forced myself on you.” 

“You didn’t,” Minseok says, and leans their foreheads against each other. “Apparently, we’ve been wrapped up in a game of miscommunication.”

There’s a hand touching Lu Han’s chest now, before sliding down and Minseok wraps his arms around Lu Han’s waist to pull him into a tight embrace. 

“This is, by far, the most stupid thing that’s ever happened to me,” Minseok is saying, and he’s laughing. 

“I don’t get it. You looked so aghast. You didn't kiss back, I thought I had fucked everything up.” 

“You left,” Minseok retaliates, “I thought I had done something wrong and you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. Were we both going to keep all of our thoughts to ourselves for the rest of our lives?”

“Yes,” Lu Han says simply.

Minseok sighs, and clutches Lu Han tighter to him. Lu Han runs his fingers through Minseok’s hair, keeping them entwined there.

“We have all the time in the world now, and you need to sleep. You’ve got a chance at the podium tomorrow,” Minseok says responsibly.

“You too, you definitely do too,” Lu Han says. 

Minseok doesn’t reply but pulls back, and pushes Lu Han and his toiletries bag into the bathroom. 

 

 

“You didn’t know it at the time but our relationship was one giant pendulum,” Minseok murmurs quietly. They’re lying spooned against each other in the same bed, and getting used to the idea of being _together_ again, perhaps not as best friends this time around, but something more.

“My original impression of you was someone quiet. You stuck around Yixing at competitions and didn’t say much to anyone else. But then you joined and the more you spent time around, the more comfortable you got, the louder and bigger your presence became. I hated it. 

There wasn’t really a logical reason to that, I just hated it on principle. But then you got downright clingy, and I more than liked having you around. It was just a flicker of a thought. But I didn’t want to want to be more than friends when all you wanted to be was friends so I toned down my feelings accordingly.

I let that thought go. I couldn’t give it any time of day because you were, you still are, Lu Han, you’re a star in the sky, and I still have both my feet on the ground. You were too far away, so I didn’t let myself think about it, and we became friends. That was good, and it was enough. 

I didn’t think it was a possibility, not until you kissed me. And that shattered a lot of the walls I had erected to keep us standing where we were. I didn’t know how to respond, but I wish you had let me tell you that I love you, a second kiss at the very least.

You’re wrong, by the way. If I had to choose between one thing and the rest of the world, I’d choose you, every single time. Not figure skating, Lu Han, just you.” 

“Did Yixing tell you that?” Lu Han asked. 

Minseok brushed Lu Han’s hair out of his face gently and skimmed the back of his knuckles along the curve of Lu Han’s mouth to wipe away the frown that was forming.

“Yes, but not in so many words. He asked me one day in practice, out of the blue, if I had to choose between figure skating and medicine, which I would pick. I didn’t answer him, and I kind of, pieced some things together. Anyway, don’t interrupt. 

When you pushed me away, and said it was a mistake, I was devastated. It was like coming so close, but not close enough, and I ended up taking it wrongly, I guess. I keep running away to give you space and give myself space, and I keep letting you run away. I think it’s time to stop running away now, because it doesn’t solve anything. You don’t improve your flip by training every other jump.” 

Lu Han makes a sound in his throat.

“You’re right,” Minseok says, “we also have to stop making everything look like figure skating. But it’s not, we don’t have to figure everything out right now. This is good enough, for now anyway. There’s another priority right now isn’t there? There’s an Olympic gold medal out there with your name on it, Lu Han.”

Lu Han snorts. “Can I talk now? Because I kind of think you’re a biased judge here.”

“No,” Minseok says, and he can’t really shake his head lying down on the bed, but he wants to. “I just have faith. You should believe in yourself too.”

“You know, long before I realized I liked you, long before I started liking you, I had always admired you for your steadiness. You’re like a star, keeping everything around you in orbit.” 

“I’m not a star,” Minseok says automatically, burying his nose in Lu Han’s shoulder. “But if I were, I’d be yours, for as long as you need me to be.” 

They have one final good luck kiss in the afternoon, safe in their hotel room and away from prying eyes. It’s a different kind of kissing now, less urgency, more exploratory, but always Lu Han wants more. It’s funny that what might be described as his torrid gay love started in Russia, but maybe there’s poetic justice in there somewhere too. 

He’s drawn last to skate, and keeps noise cancelling headphones over his ears for the entire wait. It’s uncomfortably silent in his head, but also incredibly peaceful. Lu han can’t remember the last time he had gone into a skate, much less a significant international competition, with such high spirits. It hasn’t been since his youth, when he was bold and brash and the world was his for the taking, that he’s been contented before the free skate. It must be the effects of Minseok’s words. 

He doesn’t look up at the jumbotron when he skates out onto the ice, and doesn’t pay attention to the announcer calling the scores for the skater before him. It doesn’t matter even if he does process his placement, it all means nothing to him now. Nothing in this competition can be changed. The only thing that can happen from here until the medals being awarded is how he skates. Lu Han focuses his mind on himself and his skating, loses the thoughts that are flowing rapidly through his head, and just skates.

The music plays and Lu Han begins. He takes a few moments to get into the character, using the choreography to its maximum effect before diving headfirst into the quadruple salchow. He lands it, knees bent low to carry the landing, but it’s clean and he only has time to think about the next element, a quadruple toeloop that sends him flying into the air, sailing high with his arms folded tightly against his body, one leg over the other as he spots his head around four times. The end of the opening cut of music is punctuated by his second jump, a successful triple flip that leaps into the air in time with the high note of the song. 

With the music increasing to a slightly faster tempo with a strong beat, Lu Han launches into his step sequence, twisting in this direction and then the other, one two feet and then one foot, arms over his head and driving momentum into the counters, snaking all over the ice and covering the rink in spite of its massive size. The audience claps along with the music until he reaches his first spin combination, a flying camel into a donut, switches feet but continues in the same direction and ends up in a Y-spin. 

The next sequence is a series of jumping passes in the second half of the program, angled for a 10% bonus. The first triple axel combination has him holding his breath in case the problem with the landing comes back, but he needn’t have worried. The second triple axel combination with his arms over his head during the double toeloop is just as good, if not better, than the first. The next bit happens in a blur, a triple loop, followed by his triple lutz, double loop, double sal three jump combination. The last jump element is a triple lutz that comes with almost more height than he’s able to handle, but he manages to save the landing and takes a deep breath.

His change of step sequence ends and he transitions into his final spins with a cantilever, balancing his weight on his fingertips behind him as his back lies parallel to the ice with his knees bent into a squatting spreadeagle. The moment has the audience cheering, the crowd on their feet and clapping before his sit spin variation, and then a final pancake into a scratch spin, head whipping around and around before he digs his toe pick into the ice, stopping the momentum and ending in his final pose.

The noise around him is a roar, filling his ears as flowers and gifts pour out onto the ice. Lu Han takes his bows, and skates over to his coach. Orser has a face splitting grin reaching from ear to ear, and claps Lu Han on the back.

“Well done,” he says, “well done.” 

If Lu Han had been paying attention to the skaters before him, he would have known that Minseok could have placed no lower than third, with his current score holding him in second behind Henry Lau. Henry had left the door to Olympic glory wide open with a fall on one of his quads and a stumble on what should have been an easy double axel. 

He’s not sure quite what to expect when he’s waiting for his scores, but the appearance of the numbers shock him. A world record free skate, a world record overall score, a personal best, and the small number one that rests beside his name has him jumping to his feet. Orser is standing up as well, and pulls Lu Han to him in a crushing hug, one arm up and pumping a fist wildly. 

His coach is probably more ecstatic than he is.

Right now, the only feeling he has is of euphoria, but he’s still kind of shocked. It’s surreal, what that number one means. It’s being announced henceforth as “Lu Han, Olympic gold medallist,” and having something that he hadn’t even dared to dream going into the season, not after what happened at last year’s worlds.

And after the emotional rollercoaster that the season’s been, the Olympic gold feels like acknowledgement for surviving. The press are clamouring to talk to him, cameras flashing at him from every direction. He takes one last bow in the kiss and cry area before toddling off on his skates toward the direction of the change rooms. 

He runs into Henry along the way, who grabs him by the shoulder and smiles.

“Yo man, congratulations, you did great,” he says, and Lu Han returns the hug in disbelief. 

He gets over his shock quickly when Yixing is suddenly on his back, grinding his knucles into the top of Lu Han’s head and screaming something at him that he can’t understand. Orser is chuckling at them all, and then Minseok appears, joining in the group hug of sorts, the smile on his face somehow bigger than the one on his coach’s.

“See?” Lu Han says over Yixing’s banshee wailing, “What did I tell you, you made it to the podium! Congratulations.” 

Minseok laughs at him. “Well guess who got the gold medal? Guess who was right about who was going to get the gold medal?”

“I can’t believe it!” Yixing says, suddenly deciding to make himself comprehensible after the nonsensical shouting he’s been doing into Lu Han’s ear. 

“This is unreal, you guys actually did it! I deserve some kind of medal for achieving this, you two are my crowning glory!”

“Don’t be silly,” Minseok says, at the same time as Lu Han says, “Are you kidding? Sixth place is nothing to sneeze at!”

After that they’re being quickly whisked away by officials back onto the ice for the awarding of their bouquets, and Yixing clamours for a spot in the audience. They skate out to the audience, thanking them again with another bow, cameras flashing nonstop throughout. 

Lu Han stands on the podium and feels like he’s about to cry from all the happiness, from the vibe of the night, from things going well and in his way. He’s grateful to have Minseok on his left, and if he squints he can even make out Yixing’s form in the darkness, jumping up and down and giving the loudest cheers of the crowd for his friends.

They’re presented the flowers efficiently, even with all the fanfare going around them, and standing shoulder to shoulder, the three podium finishers pose for photographer after photographer.

It doesn’t end until after the podium ceremony the day afterward. Lu Han doesn’t fully feel the weight of what’s happened until they place that Olympic gold medal over his neck and lift the Chinese flag up while the national anthem gets blasted out over the audience. He thinks from his position high on the podium he can see Yixing crying. There are still more photos to be taken, but when the commotion finally dies down, the feeling that he’s won finally starts to sink in.

Minseok seals it by stealing a kiss in a corner of the locker room while nobody is looking, a rare occurrence when everyone is busy preparing for the press release, and they get Yixing to stand guard. It’s quick but bruising, mouths hot and wet against each other, a culmination of triumph and reaching high into the sky to attain your biggest dreams. It’s like nothing Lu Han’s ever imagined, and he thinks that if they’re always so different, each kiss such a different experience from the one before, and each producing successively more butterflies, and more emotions than he thought possible, that this is something he’ll never get tired of. 

Lu Han can’t thank his lucky stars enough.

Throughout the press conference, Minseok keeps one hand on Lu Han’s thigh, not really squeezing, but the weight of it just there. It’s a gravitational point that pulls Lu Han in, draws him to reality and keeps him there, feeling as natural as an apple falling to the ground. Lu Han, this time, doesn’t push it away. Covered by the table and hidden by the table cloth, Lu Han rests his hand over top of Minseok’s and lets the action speak for itself. 

He’s said enough now, even as he answers more reporters’ questions, he’s left everything to the observer in that skate. Every single word that’s ever existed in him has been drawn out and is still lying on the ice of the iceberg skating palace, waiting only for someone to look and find them.

“Mr. Lu,” begins the last question accepted for the event, “The obvious final question everyone has is about your future in skating. Will you continue to pursue more titles, will you be retiring, or is Pyeongchang 2018 a distinct possibility?” 

Lu Han thinks about this for a moment. ‘ _Skaters must skate_ ,’ he’s told himself this season, but what do skaters do once they’re done skating?

“First of all, I want to say that I think there might be a new, younger guard to take our place by 2018,” he says and pauses. While the translator works, he thinks briefly of Jongin, who they all would have placed down money for two years ago as taking the gold in Pyeongchang. Now it’s uncertain that he’ll skate anything but exhibitions again. Lu Han doesn’t want to commit to skating another four years when he can’t even predict whether he’ll want to be skating next month.

Lu Han turns his head to the left and flashes the briefest of smiles at Minseok before continuing. “Maybe I’ll quit. I’ve loved figure skating for so long, but I think, probably, it’s time for me to find something else to love.”


End file.
